# What are history's absolute most influential texts? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 30, 2010, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095 "2010-06-30T18:10:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2010, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/41 "2010-07-01T15:16:03Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Someday, soon, the most influential text in human history, and for the very brief remainder of same, will be [_The Book of the SubGenius._](http://www.amazon.com/Book-SubGenius-Sacred-Teachings-Dobbs/dp/0671638106) There was a couple of years in my life when _High Weirdness By Mail_ was a guiding text in my life. It determined what I was either going to send for or receive in the mail almost every day during that time. That was really fun. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2010, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/42 "2010-07-01T16:18:38Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Two Treatises of Government Only the Second Treatise. Nobody reads the [First](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Treatise_on_Civil_Government#First_Treatise) any more, and there’s no reason any more to bother. Sir Robert Filmer, from a modern perspective, seems just too silly to rebut – and, I think, seemed nearly so even in Locke’s day. ---
**Author:** ![ryobserver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b2d939/32.png) [@ryobserver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ryobserver)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2010, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/43 "2010-07-01T22:27:47Z")
I’m surprised there’s been only one vote for the Analects of Confucius, and none at all for Mao Tse-Tung’s On Guerrilla Warfare, which I suspect will have more lasting impact than the more famous Little Red Book of his Sayings. Most influential _forged_ texts in history: The Donation of Constantine The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (still influential, damn it) Most influential letter (private): Undoubtedly many candidates, but I’d start with Einstein’s letter to FDR warning of the possibility of an atomic weapon. Most influential open letter: Zola, J’Accuse! M L King, Letter from Birmingham Jail Most influential telegram: **Gray Ghost** has it–the Zimmerman Telegram. The only other one I can think of that’s even close is George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” laying out a proposed US Cold War strategy. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2010, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/44 "2010-07-01T22:37:30Z")
[Quote=In Winnipeg] The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Burton [/quote] > [@Tamerlane](#): > > Did you mean [Edward Gibbon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gibbon)? And it’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, not the rise and fall. And of course, 476 AD comes halfway through the book, the rest is about the decline and decline and decline of the Eastern Empire, aka the Byzantine Empire. ---
**Author:** ![Rrose\_Selavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bcef8e/32.png) [@Rrose\_Selavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rrose_Selavy)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2010, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/45 "2010-07-01T23:25:50Z")
Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book? > **[Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_From_Chairman_Mao_Tse-Tung)** > > Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (simplified Chinese: 毛主席语录; traditional Chinese: 毛主席語錄; pinyin: Máo Zhǔxí Yǔlù) is a book of statements from speeches and writings by Mao Zedong (formerly romanized as Mao Tse-tung), the former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, published from 1964 to about 1976 and widely distributed during the Cultural Revolution. > The most popular versions were printed in small sizes that could be easily carried and were bound in bright red covers, thus commonly be... ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2010, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/46 "2010-07-01T23:45:00Z")
Plato’s _Timaeus_. Simply put,\* it’s about the relationship between human beings and the natural world, and ultimately had a profound effect on how music was perceived and composed in the Middle Ages (especially following Boethius) – until you get to theorists like Johannes Gorcheio in the late twelfth, early 13th century. Until then, music was a branch of philosophy meant to be in aid of spiritual redemption and maintaining the harmonic order of the universe, and not viewed as a craft or an art (especially instrumental music). \*Simply put because I am currently hip deep in a conference paper that compares the outcry from clerics and secular authority against popular music (Ars Nova) and instrumentalists of the 12th and 13th centuries with criticism and hysteria from civic and church leaders against rock and roll between the 1950s and 1980s, and am too demented from sifting through the writings of hot ‘n’ bothered medieval canonists to make much sense at present! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/47 "2010-07-02T00:00:10Z")
> [@ProfessorX](#): > > Call me pathetic, but I totally thought this was going to be about text messages and I was going to link to Texts From Last Night. > > The Bible, Torah and Koran had a long lead on anything else IMO. let’s derail this sucker. can you imagine the various texts world leaders would have sent? brb - jesus i don’t think the religious texts have too much of lead over notable scientific texts, notably Newton’s principles of math, darwin’s origin of species, and smith’s wealth of nations. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/48 "2010-07-02T00:01:07Z")
> [@Ms\_Boods](#): > > Until then, music was a branch of philosophy meant to be in aid of spiritual redemption and maintaining the harmonic order of the universe . . . Some things in the intellectual history of human civilization are best gotten rid of and forgotten. ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/49 "2010-07-02T00:54:05Z")
> [@Sefton](#): > > _The Confessions_, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau Ah, but that isn’t the most inluential _Confessions_ — a title that should go to Augustine’s _Confessions_, a worthy inclusion on this list. I don’t think I’ve seen Machiavelli’s _The Prince_ yet, although it may be less important than people think (I mean, he was more recording how rulers already behaved than anything else.) ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/50 "2010-07-02T00:57:39Z")
**Baby and Child Care** by Benjamin Spock (Much that was great and awful about the Baby Boom generation can be laid at the feet of this book) **The Joy of Cooking The Tale of Genji Don Quixote** (These last two codified the form of the novel as a literary form, in both Asia and Europe) **Oliver Twist** More than any other book, this one opened they eyes of the middle class to society’s inequalities. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/51 "2010-07-02T01:17:57Z")
[The Pilgrim’s Progress](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pilgrim%27s_Progress). Hugely influential in early America. Many homes on the frontier had but two books: the Bible and _Pilgrim’s Progress_. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/52 "2010-07-02T01:51:46Z")
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s _Nature_ and _The American Scholar_ _Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,_ 347 U.S. 483 (1954) Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address Jonathan Swift’s _A Modest Proposal_ ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/53 "2010-07-02T02:05:47Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Some things in the intellectual history of human civilization are best gotten rid of and forgotten. But it leads to fantastic quotes such as this one from John of Salisbury (d. 1190): ‘Could you but hear the effete emotings of their before-singing and their after-singing and their ill-advised singing, you would think it an ensemble of sirens, not of men. . .the ears are almost completely divested of their critical power, and the intellect, which pleasureableness of so much sweetness has caressed insensate, is impotent to judge the merits of things heard. Indeed, when such practices go too far, they can more easily occasion the titillation between the legs than a sense of devotion in the brain.’ I know, John; _Pet Sounds_ makes me feel pretty happy, too. Poor old sod, whose nickname was Johannes Parvus, or John the Small. Hmm. It may have been strange stuff, but without it we wouldn’t have had the invention of musical notation, polyphony, and a lot of great music and instrumentation that did come out of it (speaking as one who has had a lot of fun performing in medieval ensembles) and the subsequent development of the _Ars Nova_ which led to all the massive changes and innovation in music and harmony from the Renaissance onwards. The positive aspect of the ‘harmony of the worlds’ led to quite beautiful medieval music; there will always be No Fun Grups like Bernard of Clairvaux and Tipper Gore complaining about it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/54 "2010-07-02T03:34:23Z")
> [@Ms\_Boods](#): > > But it leads to fantastic quotes such as this one from John of Salisbury (d. 1190): ‘Could you but hear the effete emotings of their before-singing and their after-singing and their ill-advised singing, you would think it an ensemble of sirens, not of men. . .the ears are almost completely divested of their critical power, and the intellect, which pleasureableness of so much sweetness has caressed insensate, is impotent to judge the merits of things heard. Indeed, when such practices go too far, they can more easily occasion the titillation between the legs than a sense of devotion in the brain.’ > > I know, John; _Pet Sounds_ makes me feel pretty happy, too. Poor old sod, whose nickname was Johannes Parvus, or John the Small. Hmm. > > It may have been strange stuff, but without it we wouldn’t have had the invention of musical notation, polyphony, and a lot of great music and instrumentation that did come out of it (speaking as one who has had a lot of fun performing in medieval ensembles) and the subsequent development of the _Ars Nova_ which led to all the massive changes and innovation in music and harmony from the Renaissance onwards. > > The positive aspect of the ‘harmony of the worlds’ led to quite beautiful medieval music; there will always be No Fun Grups like Bernard of Clairvaux and Tipper Gore complaining about it. That’s all very interesting and good to know . . . My point was, while music is certainly one of the most wonderful things in life, the idea that music as such has any **non-esthetic** spiritual significance is almost certainly a dead end. ---
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/55 "2010-07-02T07:00:35Z")
here is a pretty interesting list: [**10 books that changed the world**](http://listverse.com/2007/07/24/top-10-books-that-changed-the-world/) ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/56 "2010-07-02T14:39:25Z")
_The Influence of Sea Power on World History_, Mahan–its influence on the Kaiser was pretty much responsible for WWI (and hence WWII). ---
**Author:** ![Satchmo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/satchmo/32/4223_2.png) [@Satchmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Satchmo)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/57 "2010-07-02T14:50:15Z")
> [@Skammer](#): > > Dante’s _Inferno_ > Darwin’s _Origins of Species_. For influence, how about _Paradise Lost_? Isn’t that the source of the whole idea of Lucifer/Satan as fallen angel? Also many of our ideas of Heaven and Hell? ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/58 "2010-07-02T15:17:50Z")
Marx’ _Capital_ should be in here as well. Lotta economists have spilled a lot of ink in defense of and in attacking it. ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/59 "2010-07-02T15:58:18Z")
art of war ---
**Author:** ![bramma23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@bramma23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bramma23)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095/60 "2010-07-02T19:53:03Z")
Most of the ones I would say have already been mentioned so I’ll list a few different ones. Milton’s Paradise Lost. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Tolkien’s LOTR. [http://www.cracked.com/article/18368\_7-books-we-lost-to-history-that-would-have-changed-world/](http://www.cracked.com/article/18368_7-books-we-lost-to-history-that-would-have-changed-world/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-historys-absolute-most-influential-texts/545095.md?page=4)