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Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?
Whom do you admire most? In what way does that person inspire you?
- fogus 17y agoMy grandfather. You guys have probably never heard of him, but he rocked.
- ojbyrne 17y agoGrowing up, my mom was basically the smartest person I knew, and it drove me to work harder. She had 2 annoying phrases that really pushed me. "Tell me something I don't know" "If that book is so good, why are you telling me about it instead of reading it?" She was a great motivator.
- shaddi 17y agoI am sure many of us look to our parents, grandparents, and other relatives as heroes. For me, I look to my dad as a hero, which is kind of funny considering how often have disagreements. I'm reminded of that line from Randy Pausch's last lecture, "Just remember, when your father was your age, he was fighting the Germans." Growing up I always heard stories about what my dad was like and what he was doing when he was in college, and the stories always seemed so distant. Now, I am going through those same years, and it blows me away to think about what my dad went through when he was at the same point in my life as I am. Coming to the US with only a few dollars in his pocket, not knowing the language, working full time at bad jobs in rough neighborhoods in Houston, going to school full time in engineering, and building a life based around making sacrifices for the benefit of his family -- comparing this to my own life, which has been free of these hardships ('cept full time school in engineering, of course!) largely due to his efforts, I can't help but be inspired. Thanks dad.
- thismat 17y agoDefinitely second this, my grandfather was 98lbs wet, and the kindest person I've ever known. Quiet, calm, assertive and wise...he's the reason I can't shake this desire to start my own business. He started a business in the 50s with minimal resources and grew it for 50 years before it was sold in 2000. I still remember him and my father paying me less than minimum wage (at the time was $5.15ish maybe?) to sweep the floors and handle trash and pick items....I miss that building, and I really wish I was older and could have talked to him more seriously before he died.
- danteembermage 17y agoMr. Rogers. The guy was amazing on so many levels; there are lots of examples but I'll go with a HN related one. He contributed valuable testimony to the betamax case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers
- sachinag 17y agoHere's the Junod profile of Mister Rogers (it's never, ever "Mr."): http://www.thedqtimes.com/pages/castpages/other/fredrogerscanyousayheropg1.htm http://www.thedqtimes.com/pages/castpages/other/fredrogersca... It will make you cry.
- karzeem 17y agoI'm so glad you said that, because I was primed to think only of entrepreneurs. But in many ways — especially the most important ones — Mr. Rogers is a better guide. Seriously. This video of Mr. Rogers is a huge help if you're ever in need of a pick-me-up. I always go back to it during the occasional rough patch. Like my sibling post, I should warn that it will make you cry. But in a good way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcvRMHz4mb4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcvRMHz4mb4
- idlewords 17y agoSo glad you said that. An outstanding human being.
- abi 17y agoSteve Jobs. (1) He has amazing taste. (2) He did it twice.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- jorgeortiz85 17y agoThrice. Twice at Apple, once at Pixar. (I'm counting NeXT as the second time at Apple. Though perhaps they should count separately.)
- pplante 17y agoBilly Mays because he was a brilliant salesman.
- termie 17y agothe unsung heroes who don't make time for brown-nosing and fame-whoring
- PStamatiou 17y agois this the same termie from back in the flock day? http://www.flickr.com/photos/foolswisdom/43145184/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/foolswisdom/43145184/
- termie 17y agoNo, I recently resurrected this handle from my 80s BBS days.
- jonnyrotten 17y agoCarl Sagan.
- evanreyn 17y agoIf you wish to make a hero from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
- crystalis 17y agopg, because this is a cult. ;)
- seiji 17y agoGoogle Suggest always wants to autocomplete my searches for "site:news.ycombinator.com" as "site news.ycombinator.com pg cult." (try it yourself) Do people actually search for the term "pg cult?"
- MikeCapone 17y agoI wasn't sure if you were kidding so I tried it. It's true!
- blasdel 17y agoThey do now!
- codedivine 17y agoGoogle never lies.
- jmtame 17y agoYukichi Fukuzawa anyone?
- bokonist 17y agoHis biography has been sitting on my shelf for a while, I really need to find time to read it.
- jmtame 17y agomy favorite book to date
- defen 17y agoGreat cultural disconnect from his autobiography: Japanese envoy: Is the sale and purchase of land in Amsterdam freely permitted? Dutch merchant: Certainly it is free. Envoy: Do you sell land to foreigners also? Merchant: Yes, as long as a foreigner is willing to pay for the land, we would sell any amount of it to any person Envoy: Then, suppose a foreigner were to put down a large sum of money to purchase a great tract of land in order to build a fortress, would you allow that too? Merchant: We never had occasion to think of such a case. Even though there are many rich men in England and France and other countries, we do not believe any merchant would spend money on such a venture.
- elbenshira 17y agoJesus, because the world would be a better place if we were more like him.
- nopassrecover 17y agoI know this was probably to provoke a reaction but Jesus as I understand him was a revolutionary who pushed people to stop following the established religion and financing its greed and instead to start living a good life. In this sense he was like Martin Luther in that he envisioned decentralised religion as the ideal - moral living for the masses not blind expensive ritual controlled by the few. But I could be completely wrong.
- oldgregg 17y agoI totally agree with you on all counts. Except for the moral living part. It's establishment religious types that promote moralism-- Jesus' whole point is that your good works don't do jack squat.
- joeyo 17y agoSola fide is a controversial stance, at best. Consider James 2:26, "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."
- defen 17y ago> Sola fide is a controversial stance, at best Talk about an understatement! The Protestant Reformation is one of those things that has had such a tremendous impact on the world that I think it might be impossible to imagine the world without it (I only spent a few minutes just now trying, though)
- nopassrecover 17y agoYeah my view on morals is more egoist than most but I assume that a system of morality is the best-case output of religion.
- nsoonhui 17y agoAlbert Einstein. The greatest scientist ever lived.
- nopassrecover 17y agoThomas Jefferson. A man who saw the world as it could be and did everything he could to get it there.
- Ras_ 17y agoAlexander Hamilton: The Man who enabled Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase with his shrewd policies (like debt assumption - cool economic hack) as Secretary of the Treasury. Federalist Papers are/were invaluable too. Bonus point for not having a mausoleum, library or any other grand memorial as a monument to him.
- jballanc 17y ago...though he does have an entire Manhattan neighborhood named after him!
- tomjen2 17y agoAlso exceptionally brilliant.
- nopassrecover 17y agoDefinitely. He's someone I aspire to.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- Eliezer 17y agoLeo Szilard. Had the idea for fission chain reaction, realized what would happen if Hitler got hold of it, and kept his mouth shut... while browbeating the skeptical Fermi into starting the Manhattan Project, and ghostwriting Einstein's letter to Roosevelt. Right up there with Norman Borlaug and Stanislav Petrov on the list of people you've never heard of because CNN is too busy covering Michael Jackson.
- dfranke 17y agoI'll stick with Borlaug. I know singing his praise has become slightly cliched on this forum, but he very objectively deserves it. He's done more for humanity than anyone since whoever it was that discovered how to make fire.
- antiismist 17y agoIs the Hitler story true? Wikipedia says that he got the idea in London, where he filed a patent (!) for the fission chain reaction. Here's the link to his patent, btw: http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=GB&NR=630726&KC=&FT=E http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=GB&...
- Eliezer 17y agoI think he filed the patent and then got the patent classified.
- psawaya 17y agoSo happy to see him mentioned - I recently read a collection of his short stories (The Voice of the Dolphins) and highly recommend it. His writing is somewhat dry, but really gives you a perspective on how people thought during the cold war era.
- FraaJad 17y agoBenjamin Franklin.
- bokonist 17y agoDeng Xiaoping. In the pure utilitarian sense, he may have had the greatest positive impact of any person in the 20th century. In a century wracked by war between the ideologies, his philosophy was just the tonic the world needed: "Who cares if the mouse is black or white, as long it catches the mouse".
- tokenadult 17y agoI'd give Chiang Ching-kuo the credit for preceding Deng in that point of view.
- cowmoo 17y ago"Don't care if the cat is a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches the mouse, it's a good cat." Basically for those who are interested in the background of the quote, Deng arose to power at the end of the Cultural Revolution, at the height of Chinese communism ideology when the government was so communist that they broke away from the Soviet's and accused of USSR as "revisionist"; destroyed all of the Buddhist temples in China as "backwards and Confucius," imprisoned the sons and daughters of former capitalists (because there were no current one's left) for being "Western corrupution," and stripped intellectual's of their post in Universities and forced them to "country-side re-education camps" for being "radical leftists against communism." Before he rose to power, Deng himself was denounced and stripped of his political post, and sent down for "re-education." In little as four or five years, in that kind of environment, Deng has reformed the former Chinese market-command economy to become more capitalistic. Liberalized the political and free-speech in China, that allowed for media/film/journalism criticize the Chinese Communist party which eventually led to the Tienanmen Incident. Deng, confronted tremendous criticism and resistance from the hardliners of the Community party when he tried enact his reform. He used this quote about "black cat" or "white cat" in a speech he delivered to the political cadres to persuade them to be a bit more pragmatic and less ideological about their communism, after 43 million people have died from Great Leap Forward and the Culture Revolution. It was also Deng who eventually issued the order to strike down the student protesters in Tienanmen. This ambivalent character of Deng, of balancing liberalization versus stability has become a hallmark quality of the Chinese government. See how the Chinese government encourages citizens towards private asset ownership and entrepreneurship, but not towards democratic representation. See how the Chinese government agrees in principle to a Korea/Iran nuke disarmament, but they are more so wary of the stability of Korea/Iran region in the event of a international escalation - that they block the UN Security Council sanctions. Whether the current Chinese/Russian model of free markets but central strong political oligarchy without an ideological emphasis, versus the American model of free markets and free democracy with a strong ideology (leader of the free world), the viability of either models remains to be seem.
- donaq 17y agoJoss Whedon. Because damn, Buffy was a brilliant show.
- ojbyrne 17y agoIsaac Newton - Newton's Laws, Theory of Gravity _and_ Calculus. and William Shakespeare - basically invented modern english.
- MikeCapone 17y agoA few off the top of my head (most are self-explanatory): Charles Darwin, Richard P. Feynman, J. Robert Oppenheimer, John Von Neuman, Paul Erdos, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Thomas Jefferson, Aubrey de Grey, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Douglas R. Hofstadter
- araneae 17y agoAubrey de Grey? You mean the crazy dude that tells people we're going to live forever without any evidence to support his claims? And Hofstadter, the guy who wrote that really dumb book? (Here I admit that I only read the introduction before being disgusted by his treatment with concept of things which are self referential. It's kind of a noob outlook to find something mind boogling about the fact that a mind can contemplate itself.) Pity, because the rest of your list is pretty damn classy. Those two are pretty weird additions.
- dfranke 17y agoI find it a little odd that you think Aubrey de Grey is crazy but Eliezer Yudkowsky isn't, given that EY is a vocal supporter of de Grey's research and claims that we'll live forever for considerably more speculative reasons than any that de Grey asserts. Any explanation of the distinction other than that EY is probably reading this comment and that de Grey probably isn't?
- araneae 17y agoThe answer to your query is that I confess a blazing ignorance of EY. Basically, the only people that buy the whole load of nonsense are folks that desperately want to live forever, like my ex (who regularly makes donations to fund longevity research). Aging isn't a disease, because lifespan is something which is subject to evolutionary pressure. Our lifespans are what they are because they evolved to be that way. It's a little unintuitive, but consider the tarantula. The female tarantula lives 8 years; the male tarantula only about 2. This is because it's advantageous for females to live longer. For the males, it's more advantageous to live for shorter periods, so they age and die earlier. You're not going to be able to treat aging because it's programmed in. The only solution is to fix the source code.
- uuilly 17y agoWinston Churchill. Saved western civilization.
- gloob 17y agoSaved western civilization. From western civilization. Other than that, I pretty much agree with you.
- uuilly 17y agoI admire him for saving it. Whether he saved it from a rouge element of fringe western civilization (most of Germany not being part of the Roman Empire,) or the Muffin Man doesn't take away from his accomplishment.
- fjabre 17y agoElon Musk
- slyn 17y agoDavid Chappelle I hate that he has faded so much from the public eye. If you've never seen Dave Chappelle's Block Party get it and watch it, whether you enjoy hip-hop or not. If you've seen that and are otherwise interested his Inside the Actors Studio interview is pretty solid too. He is basically the type of role model I wish I could be someday.
- vinutheraj 17y agoI like Chris Rock, I like it that he is frank and forthcoming and always thinks a lot about what he says, whatever he says is logical and makes sense, sometimes you get inspired by watching his shows, especially with all the crowd ! Try Bigger and Blacker and Bring the Pain, two of the funniest shows I have ever seen !
- rms 17y agoHas his original script for Half Baked ever been released?
- yesimahuman 17y agoJohn Carmack. I think I've just always been an Id fan since I grew up with Quake, and I was just blown away the first time I read the Quake 1 source. I have just always dreamed of being a great C hacker like him. And he's doing even more amazing stuff now with Armadillo.
- projectileboy 17y agoSeconded. I remember reading his .plan files in the 90s when he was working on Quake II, and I was amazed at how much he'd get done in a day. If you want an education in programming, download some of his source code: http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/ http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/
- r11t 17y agoCarmack definitely has a place in my mind as one of the greatest hackers ever. I was kind of bummed that he did not respond to the interview request for the "Coders at Work" book. However, the "Masters of Doom" book offered a fun insight into his early hacking adventures!
- smhinsey 17y agoRichard Feynman, because he showed me through his writing that we all, no matter our backgrounds, can be enthralled by the mysteries that surround us.
- araneae 17y agoAnd that through charisma, you can become more famous than physicists that do better physics than you.
- adharmad 17y agoAny examples?
- araneae 17y agoMurray Gell-Mann
- jballanc 17y agoYeah, but I wonder how much of Gell-Mann's fame comes from his sometimes derogatory comments about Feynman
- sage_joch 17y agoA bit of searching turned up this really interesting article about the two: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/07/johnson.htm http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/07/johnson.htm.
- marknutter 17y agoThis is probably the most irritating comment I've seen on HN so far. Boo.
- Confusion 17y agoWhat is the point of this remark? Feynman was brilliant and deserved that Nobel as much as Gell-Mann. The difference is that Feynman was also inspiring, while the Gell-Mann perhaps deserved a second Nobel. That's plenty of reason to admire the first and not the latter.
- netsp 17y agoLiterary: george orwell douglas adams leonard cohen
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- eam 17y agoJohn Resig.
- platshaw 17y agoIan MacKaye - he lives his life completely on his own terms; maintains a purity about what he is doing; is able to see straight through roadblocks; and creates great music. I want to be an entrepreneur like Ian is a musician.
- jjs 17y agoI admire the amazing people I know, the ones who make me think, if I try just a little harder, I can be like them.
- nsfx 17y agoHenry Rollins. Creative, productive, knowledgeable, and funny.
- psawaya 17y ago...and kind of a jerk, in his early days. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_3g4QPojMc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_3g4QPojMc
- fuzzmeister 17y agoElon Musk, a man who tries to change the world through his businesses.
- byrneseyeview 17y agoBenjamin Graham, Claude Hopkins. Both wandered into fields full of failed artists and wild gamblers, and turned them into something closer to a science. The Intelligent Investor and Scientific Advertising are the only two books I know of that can give the same person the same epiphany twice.
- jobenjo 17y agoBill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes). He created an epic masterpiece, never sold out, and left at the top of his game. He achieved fame without being drawn into celebrity, and his ideas have permeated our culture in a deep and wonderful way.
- thismat 17y agoBill Watterson had an ability to capture such emotion and life like expression with a small 2d comic strip like no other comic or graphic I've ever seen. The guy was amazing, and I love that he lives as a recluse in a town that won't give him up to the media either. In fact, not many people even know what he looks like anymore from what I've read. The never selling out part is also awesome. He refused to allow even one Hobbes stuffed tiger to be made because it would devalue his character...simply amazing, he really did it for the art.
- pfedor 17y agoI admire Carl Djerassi. He created the first oral contraceptive and made a lot of money off of it, and then as a chemistry professor he did first-class research in organic chemistry for many years (according to my dad who is a chemistry professor, Djerassi's contribution can totally be considered Nobel-prize-worthy.) But that's not what I admire him for the most. What really gets to me is that at the age of sixty five, he said, hey, let's try something new, and started writing fiction. He wrote several books, and they are really good and a pleasure to read, and if you took one in a bookstore and started reading it you would say it's a very fine novel even if you didn't know the first thing about the author. Why don't you give it a shot: http://www.amazon.com/Cantors-Dilemma-Novel-Carl-Djerassi/dp/0140143599/ http://www.amazon.com/Cantors-Dilemma-Novel-Carl-Djerassi/dp... Think about it. He was sixty five. What will you be doing that age.
- cowmoo 17y agoWhen I'm sixty five, I'll be playing WoW and listening to the nostalgic popular records of my day, from fine artists such as Soulja Boy Tell 'Em and T-Pain.
- dylanz 17y agoBill Mollison. Hilarious, Intelligent, and a Revolutionary (in my mind).
- maxharris 17y agoAyn Rand, for her development of Aristotelian philosophy (normative ethics, hierarchical nature of knowledge, theory of concept formation)
- theashworld 17y agoGandhi. For being fearless _and_ inspiring an entire country to be fearless without a single weapon in hand. Think about it, it's nothing short of a miracle.
- bokonist 17y agoGandhi is not the man you think he is: http://history.eserver.org/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt http://history.eserver.org/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt
- ajju 17y agoI am an ardent critic of Gandhi, and many of those criticisms of Gandhi are worth considering and outside of private discussions, rarely brought up in India. However, for an article that criticizes Gandhi for being racist, the author has some nerve saying: "Throughout his entire life Gandhi displayed the most spectacular inability to understand or even really take in people unlike himself--a trait which V.S. Naipaul considers specifically Hindu, and I am inclined to agree." Edit: The article is also not without glaring inaccuracies. For example, the author claims that Gandhi supported Subhash Chandra Bose's Indian National Army. Nothing could be further from the truth. The only reason Subhash Chandra Bose even quit the Indian National Congress was because Gandhi had him kicked out because of ideological differences.
- bokonist 17y agoThe article says, "He [Gandhi] sang the praises of Subhas Chandra Bose" And indeed, in 1942 Gandhi called Bose "a prince among the patriots". Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Subhash_Chandra_Bose#cite_note-18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Subhash_Chan... Wikipedia says that this was a "a reference, in particular, to Bose's achievement in integrating women and men from all the regions and religions of India in the Indian National Army." The source for the wikipedia quote is The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Thus it seems that the claim from the article is indeed correct, albeit it one-sided.
- grandalf 17y ago
- sdave 17y agoMy Dad. because of the person he is & i want to be. Steve Wozniak.because of the engineer he is & i want to be.
- jacquesm 17y agoEckart Wintzen http://extent.nl/about-eckart/ http://extent.nl/about-eckart/ Unfortunately he's no longer.
- rv77ax 17y agohomer simpsons. i know, i know, his totally a jerk, but i wish i could spend just one day with him.
- davidw 17y agoThe guys who did the moon landings. What an amazing display of engineering and courage.
- MikeHawk 17y agoThey don't make guys like that anymore...
- Eliezer 17y ago[Citation needed.]
- marknutter 17y agoTruly they were film making visionaries.
- derwiki 17y agoCraig Newmark for being truly a nerd, yet having an enormous impact on society. He spoke at my undergrad commencement (also his alma mater), and what really hit me from his speech was, wow, you WERE an engineering nerd just like all the rest of us. He inspires me because through his great success, he's remained extremely humble and down to earth. It really seems like he just wants to keep his site going as a public service. They donate a large portion of their income to charity as is.. if only all public services could be run as well that they GIVE extra money away!
- spectre 17y agoEdmund Hillary. For using his fame only to help people, and always being humble.
- r11t 17y agoFravia for creating http://searchlores.org/ http://searchlores.org/ and inspiring me and I bet countless other seekers/hackers/reverse engineers. His website has articles on everything from "reality cracking" to searching the deeper web. His recent death saddened me deeply but I hope that his website will hopefully taken over by someone who will continue updating it.
- keeptrying 17y agoRichard Feynman. For his boundless curiosity and his ability to convey that love of finding things out and making things to others.
- ajju 17y agoFeynman, Einstein, Jiddu Krishnamoorthy, Sardar Patel, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin..
- drawkbox 17y agoNikola Tesla
- adi_muresan 17y agoIndeed, the guy was really a genius. He pushed the whole of humanity towards using alternate current and it saddens me to see that he didn't (and still doesn't) get the credit he deserves. In my mind he's the only true genius.
- drawkbox 17y agoHe was one in at least 20 billion.
- chrischen 17y agoAlbert Einstein - for being different and being the smartest person who ever lived.
- hop 17y agoWarren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Carnegie, Phil Knight, Steve Fosset... The founders - Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Washington - the world owes them a debt of gratitude. Ernest Shackleton, Pat Tillman, Chuck Darwin, (politics aside)Barack Obama, Samuel Clemens, Einstein, Micheal Jordan, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Emerson, Jon Stuart, Ron Paul, MacGyver, Elon Musk, Hugh Hefner, Tiger Woods, Feynman, Socrates, Lewis & Clark, my mother. (don't mind the order) Funny, I think all of these people, except my mother, are athiest/agnostic, goes to show you...
- jibiki 17y ago> Funny, I think all of these people are athiest/agnostic, goes to show you... Why do you think that? Dylan famously converted to Christianity, BHO is a long time churchgoer, and Ron Paul is supposedly a creationist Christian. I don't really know about the others (obviously Einstein had a lot to say about god and dice and so on, but that hardly makes him a believer...)
- hop 17y agoOh yes, overlooked Ron Paul, Obama too, as religious people. Jury is out on Einstein, hes has made comments both ways. I'm probably wrong about a few others too. And for some reason I wrote Steve Fossett when I meant Richard Branson. Long day. Thanks.
- arethuza 17y ago"if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time"
- bayareaguy 17y agoThe folks who've lead the development and improvement of Unix over the years: dmr, bwk, jkh, tdr, cgd, ...
- basugasubaku 17y agoWho are the last three and did you intentionally omit Ken Thompson?
- bayareaguy 17y agoThe last are a few folks behind *BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD) whose logins/monikers I happened to recall. I only omitted Ken (and others too numerous to mention) mainly because I've not had the pleasure of corresponding with him.
- xor_ 17y agoDonald Knuth needs no introductions.
- maxklein 17y agoArnold Schwarzenneger. The dedication required to make it as an immigrant from nothing to the stage he currently is at is nothing short of amazing.
- bootload 17y agopeople like "shooter" who stay positive & contribute even in the face of adversity ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=868325 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=868325 & http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=867623 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=867623
- ismarc 17y agoImmanuel Kant, if nothing more than realizing he was wrong and spending over 10 years trying to discover what may be right.
- gritzko 17y agoCarl Gustaf Emil von Mannerheim; the guy who rocked
- brg 17y agoIn the 20th Century, John VonNeumann. He was a hacker through and through. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
- covercash 17y agoDean Kamen. So much more than the Segway.
- tjmc 17y agoBurt Rutan - the Ruth/Gretzky/Bradman of aviation engineering
- snitko 17y agoI like George Carlin, but I do not admire him. I called that name here, because currently he gets a lot of my attention (haven't seen all of his performances yet). I find Carlin views very close to mine and admire professionalism and desire to work hard on his job. But I don't think we should admire people, especially for a long time in our lives. I guess, it's like "liking -> falling in love -> peaceful loving or forgetting (if it didn't work)". I think it's healthy to find things you don't like in the person you admire and enjoy accepting them as is and gain understanding of your own views this way. I guess this would be the way you build your own personality.
- abrahamsen 17y agoDoug McIlroy http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sinclair/doug/?doug=mcilroy http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sinclair/doug/?doug=mcilroy
- cromulent 17y agoTeddy Roosevelt. They don't make presidents like that anymore, in any country. Also my buddy, who, whilst being induced into the Catholic confirmation process whilst in primary school, refused, saying that "I'm not convinced. It sounds like some sort of cult". I wish I had been so self-confident (not that being confirmed hurt me).
- nick007 17y agoRalph Nader... he's one of the great American patriots
- replicatorblog 17y agoWalt Disney doesn't get the credit he deserves as an innovator and entrepreneur. His legacy has been tarnished a bit my the hyper-consumerism that the Disney company is famous for. That said he: 1. Invented the feature length animated movie. A multi-billion dollar business that paved the way for Pixar, Aardman, and all the other great creators we admire in that industry. 2. Invented the modern theme park. The "Second Life" of 1955! This is another massive multi-billion dollar business. It is also impressive in its technical scope employing physicists, pyrotechnic folks, and a bunch of roboticists who work on the audio-animatronic robots. 3. The Disney "Imagineering" crew is probably one of the most interesting interdisciplinary groups around combining nearly every kind of engineer with every kind of artist to create amazing things on an ongoing basis. 4. Before he died he was applying his ideas on art and technology to urban planning. Not in the way you would expect (e.g. No mouse ears), but marrying ideas of "New Urbanism" with technological futurism to rethink how we live and work. His story is also a classic one of entrepreneurial striving, failure, and an unwillingness to give up. Check out this book for more inspiration: http://www.amazon.com/Walt-Disney-Triumph-American-Imagination/dp/0679757473/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254997213&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Walt-Disney-Triumph-American-Imaginati...
- tomjen2 17y agoGeorge Washington. The one of two people in all of history I know of who truely didn't want power. After the war the British Monarch asked what Washington wanted to do; he was then informed that he planed to return to his farm (which he did) upon which the king commented that if he did that he would be the greatest man in the world. You have to be some person to get your greatest enemy to say that you are the greatest man in the world.
- seanstickle 17y agoThe other person being, presumably, Cincinnatus?
- tomjen2 17y agoYes.
- edw519 17y agoMy grandfathers. Both left eastern Europe, alone, as teenagers, to come to the U.S., knowing that they would never see their birthplace again, and that they probably would never see most of their relatives again. They did this because they knew they had much better chance for a better life, for themselves and for their unknown children and grandchildren. Every time things get tough, I remind myself, "They came here for me," and then my challenges seem awfully small.
- MikeHawk 17y agoNoam Chomksy.
- nahumfarchi 17y agoLeonardo da Vinci because he didn't limit himself to the art/science divide.
- jlees 17y agoEmmeline Pankhurst, because without her activities, and their effect on society, I would never have had the chance to achieve what I have. Also my grandmother; entrepreneur, politician and pillar of her local society. (I felt this list needed more oestrogen, though both of the above are completely genuine. I'd add Thatcher, but I don't think I could survive the pitchforks - nevertheless, I do admire what she achieved.)
- chanux 17y agoThe Woz for being the hacker he is and being different from other Steve.(I'm not sure. Few people came in mind, RMS, Linus, My friend geekaholic, But Woz was strong.)
- niks 17y agoGeorge Foreman....because without him I'd have to use my barbecue ALL the time
- david927 17y agoAlan Kay, for constantly inventing the future.
- hegemonicon 17y agoMarcus Aurelius - relentless in his quest for self perfection even while ruling one of the most powerful empires in the world.
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoThis reminds me of George Washington's words: Whatever you do, please don't build a monument for me. I'm happy just serving. So what did they do? Built a huge freaking stone phallus in the middle of the nation's capital. I admire a lot of people. Too many to try to narrow it down. The difficult part about choosing one is that you're always looking at relative progress. At the end of the day, doing something admirable means measuring the delta between what most people like you accomplished and what you accomplished. That means that famous president with a big monument probably isn't as impressive as poor, uneducated grandfather who did something to make a lot of people's lives' better. But I think you measure greatness in making people's lives better in the long run. So if I don't have candidates, I definitely have the metric.