Who else has affected world history like JESUS CHRIST.
He has my vote.
I would vote for Shakespeare, or to be perfectly precise, whichever human being wrote the plays and poetry now attributed to Shakespeare.
He obviously had had the biggest effect on literature of any human ever, and probably the biggest effect on art in general. But above and beyond that, he has influenced countless people’s views on the difference between right and wrong and all kinds of philosophical and religious questions.
The responses seem to consider the western hemisphere only. On the other side of the aisle of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Kant we have Siddhartha, Confucious, Lao Tzu, Adi Shankara, Al-Ghazali, Averreos(sp?)… It is impossible to quantify greatness and influence in this domain. Is it merely numbers influenced? Shakespeare? I’d offer Kalidasa.
I’d say we can get a better result if we focus on quantifiable scientific contributions to society (though even this is subjective at some level).
How Eurocentric we all are.
Jesus Christ not in the running, I vote for Gandhi.
Way back, a long time ago, the first proto-humans were developing and taking form. Somewhere along the way, some little chunk of human mutated and decided that we should reproduce through sexual reproduction.
That’s the greatest guy. Right there. You have your winner. Thanks, g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-granddad. Smooth move.
Nicolo Machiavelli. His work The Prince probably had more influence on western politics than at least most others (even if people read it it and went “Gah!”)
Hmmm… Mohammed, Buddah, Julius Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan…
I’d have to vote for me. Since, I know I exist, but for all I know, you all are just a bunch of figments of my imagination!
But if other people do exist, I’d have to say my mom. 
Kirk
Personally, I agree that all religious figures should be excluded. Yeah, Jesus, Buddah, and Mohammad all probably existed, but their stories have become so distorted by millennia of religious aggrandizement who knows what the straight dope with any of them is. It’s like “Whisper Down the Lane” to the tenth power.
I think the measure of the greatest person ever should be both their internal achievements in self actualization and their positive external achievements for the betterment of humanity in the long or short term.
In that spirit I vote for either Socrates, Newton, or Einstein. Before Socrates it’s shocking how little we knew about anything. He and his colleagues and followers discovered a dozen sciences purely with their powers of perception; no one had ever made such an organized investigation of reality before them, and few have been as monumentally successful since. But, Newton and Einstein are also men that unraveled secrets of existence and the universe seemingly out of thin air and forever changed humanity. Lock those three in a room, let Mozart provide musical stimulation, and I very much doubt you’ll get something that looks like this. 
Actually without Paul, Jesus’s name might not be heard much these days.
By this definition, Johann Gutenberg.
cough[sub]Mein Kampf[/sub]cough
I beg to differ with that. Jesus is not a fictional character. Sorry you’ve been deluded into thinking so.
Not to be argumentative, but the Roman, Mongol, and Alexandrian Empires all fell, but Christianity is still here. It predates Islam by hundreds of years, although Buddha did live well before Jesus Christ. Believers in Christ (i.e. Christians) have travelled to EVERY country in the world as missionaries, a record of fervor that neither Buddhism nor Islam can match, and Christianity is more far-flung geographically than either of those religions as a result.
I even looked up “Jesus Christ” in my old World Book Encyclopedias, and it flatly stated that “probably no person has had more impact upon world history.”
So there. 
Mine also.
With any luck, the greatest person in history has yet to be born.
I vote for the first person to figure out suicide. I have no clue who they are, but I assume it was someone - and let’s face it; every since then, we’ve been able to abstract living life with a purpose.
-Justhink
I’m not a bible scholar, but I’ll throw this in the mire anyway:
Jesus is said to have referred to John the Baptist as the greatest human ever born… (Matthew 11:11)
Maybe Jesus was just being modest.
I’d thought we were talking about human beings.
Regular ONLY-human beings.
“probably no person has had more impact upon world history”
That is highly debateable to put it mildly. For one thing Jesus, while he lived, was only the leader of a tiny Jewish sect. It was Paul who really set Christianity off into becoming a world religion. Without Paul Christianity might have easily fizzled out.
Whereas Muhammad and Buddha were instrumental in spreading their religion thus combining the roles of Jesus and Paul. Muhammad was important as a secular leader as well unlike Jesus. The Buddha was an important philosopher unlike Jesus.
So even if you believe that Christianity is the most important religion that doesn’t translate into Jesus being the most important person.
Also IMO there is a distinction between the “greatest” and the “most important”.
I mean no disrespect to Ben Franklin, nor do I want to overstate the importance of any one man in most endeavors. Still, I want to re-state the importance of George Washington.
Washington himself would have acknowledged that he was hardly alone in his efforts to creat a new nation, and that the success of the American Revolution depended on key contributions from many people (certainly, if Ben Franklin hadn’t won the support of France, the American Revolution would have failed).
But even once American independence was won, the success of the new republic was far from a sure thing. I don’t believe any other man in the new nation commanded as much respect from as many quarters as George Washington did. I can’t imagine who else would have been trusted with an office as powerful as that of the Presidency. Who else could have won the allegiance of both the Federalists and the Jeffersonians?
And even then, the new Republic could still have evolved into a dictatorship or neo-monarchy, or could have descended into anarchy. That the new Constitution and new government worked as well as it did (however imperfectly) is due primarily to the esteem in which Washington was held, which was due in large part to his personal sense of honor.
Moreover, by VOLUNTARILY giving up power after 8 years, Washington set an important precedent, one that no President dared to challenge until 1940.
I guess I’m still inclined to name Sir Isaac Newton as the greatest individual who ever lived, simply because most of his accomplishments were his and his alone, and because they were so groundbreaking. In many cases, it’s fair to argue that “if this-or-that great man hadn’t done what he did, somebody else probably would certainly have done it in a few years.” But Newton was waaaay ahead of his time.
George Washington’s accomplishments weren’t due to him alone- but I don’t see the United States becoming or STAYING a functioning republic without him. And without a successful United States, serving as a model for a democratic republic, the history of the world changes drastically.