Who were the wisest men in history?

In My Humble Opinion
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Especially regarding human nature… Ideas?

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I should add that wise women are certainly not excluded…

3

Modesty forbids… :smiley:

I’d nominate Thomas Paine, myownself. He was, IIRC, a failure at about everything he tried except for eloquently stating his opinions, including that -
A) people were not meant to be slaves
2) children are undeserving of cruelty
III) men and women deserve equal rights

Sure, others may have put forth those ideas, but Paine also rejected religion and wrote so well that some have credited him with saving the Revolution with American Crisis.

(I’m assuming this is public domain, being 230 years old)

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Oprah?

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Heh, now that you mention it, Tom Paine is a really good nominee, I gotta hand it to you for coming up with a beaut so early in the thread.

My nominee is Sojourner Truth, who said things like, “If women want any rights more’n they got, why don’t they just take ‘em, and not be talkin’ about it?”

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Thomas Paine, good, good…

Add to that list: John Stuart Mill

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Seems to me that if a person is attention-seeking enough to be **famous **for his wisdom, he should be disqualified from consideration.

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Me!

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Oh, a wise guy!

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Just in case any Dopers need evidence in support of Malientation’s excellent nomination of John Stuart Mill, here is a famous passage from On Liberty:

The full text of On Liberty is here.

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Proof that famous = attention-seeking? One can be unintentionally famous…and why would attention-seeking negate wisdom, anyway? :slight_smile:

Paine is a great one. My nominee is Elizabeth I of England. Forget the “Golden Age”, she did a brilliant job just keeping England afloat (so to speak) during her reign. That she managed to propel it to its place at the top of commerce, religious tolerance, artistic excellence, colonization, etc. etc. etc., always boggles me when I think about how easy it would have been to seriously bugger up. Fantastic diplomat, but she got things done.

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Well, are we listing people who said/wrote wise things, or those who lived wisely? 'Cause I suspect they’d be two different lists.

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I’d think a valid argument could be made for nominating Benjamin Franklin.

I’m not gonna make it, though; I’m at work and don’t have the time to dig up cites, etc…

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Here are some of the wisest sayings I know.

Murphy. “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

Runyon’s Law: “The race isn’t always to the swift, and the battle isn’t always to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.”

Ambrose Bierce. “CYNIC: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.”

Theodore Sturgeon. “90% of everything is crap”.

Barnum. “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Hmm. There seems to be a pattern here. :slight_smile:

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I’ll never forget the anonymous rural sage who, under conditions I’d rather not expand on too much here, told me the thing that most challenged my view of the world:

“Okay, college boy, if you’re so smart and I’m so dumb, how come I’m the one holding the gun?”

Confucius and Maimonides would have blushed with envy!

Among famous philosophers, I’m partial to Jack Handey, who once wrote “I’d rather be rich than stupid.” Pretty much says it all!

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How about Plutarch

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Gandhi Gandhi Gandhi.

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The Dalai Lama.

(Who was, of course, raised from birth to be wise and spiritual. Or who was recognized at birth to already be wise and spiritual. Does it matter which?)

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Shakespeare.

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Wise regarding human nature?

Mark Twain.