Post who you think the smartest person in history

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Leibnitz on Newton:
>When Sir A. Fountaine was at Berlin with Leibnitz in 1701, and at supper with the Queen of Prussia, she asked Leibnitz his opinion of Sir Isaac Newton. Leibnitz said that taking mathematicians from the beginning of the world to the time when Sir Isaac lived, what he had done was much the better half; and added that he had consulted all the learned in Europe upon some difficult points without having any satisfaction, and that when he applied to Sir Isaac, he wrote him in answer by the first post, to do so and so, and then he would find it.
Goethe on Shakespeare:
>"There is no pleasure greater and purer than, with eyes closed, accompany a Shakespeare's play, not declaimed, but recited by a safe and natural voice."

Oh it feels good to be an Anglo.
Face it Veeky Forums, hate them all you will, the most exalted minds this rock has ever produced have been English, British at the very least.

me

If it wasn't for Paul, Christianity would still be a Jewish sect.

It's too bad the moral majority and their ilk ruined Christianity.

But he didn't do most of that. We actually have very little idea what he actually did.

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>As a 6 year old, he could divide two 8-digit numbers in his head and could converse in Ancient Greek
>When he was sent at the age of 15 to study advanced calculus under the renowned analyst Gábor Szegő, Szegő was so astounded with the boy's talent in mathematics that he was brought to tears on their first meeting.
>By the age of 19, von Neumann had published two major mathematical papers, the second of which gave the modern definition of ordinal numbers, which superseded Georg Cantor's definition.
>At the conclusion of his education at the gymnasium, von Neumann sat for and won the Eötvös Prize, a national prize for mathematics.
>He started his lectures as a privatdozent at the University of Berlin in 1928 being the youngest person ever elected privatdozent in its history in any subject. By the end of 1929, he had published thirty-two major papers, at a rate of nearly one major paper per month.
>Von Neumann held a lifelong passion for ancient history, being renowned for his prodigious historical knowledge. A professor of Byzantine history at Princeton once said that von Neumann had greater expertise in Byzantine history than he did.
>Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe speculated: "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man".
>Eugene Wigner wrote that, seeing von Neumann's mind at work, "one had the impression of a perfect instrument whose gears were machined to mesh accurately to a thousandth of an inch."
>Paul Halmos states that "von Neumann's speed was awe-inspiring."
>Israel Halperin said: "Keeping up with him was ... impossible. The feeling was you were on a tricycle chasing a racing car."
>Edward Teller said "von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us."

>George Dantzig brought von Neumann an unsolved problem in linear programming "as I would to an ordinary mortal", on which there had been no published literature, he was astonished when von Neumann said "Oh, that!", before offhandedly giving a lecture of over an hour, explaining how to solve the problem using the hitherto unconceived theory of duality.
>Jacob Bronowski wrote "He was the cleverest man I ever knew, without exception. He was a genius."
>George Pólya, whose lectures at ETH Zürich von Neumann attended as a student, said "Johnny was the only student I was ever afraid of. If in the course of a lecture I stated an unsolved problem, the chances were he'd come to me at the end of the lecture with the complete solution scribbled on a slip of paper."
>One of his remarkable abilities was his power of absolute recall. As far as I could tell, von Neumann was able on once reading a book or article to quote it back verbatim; moreover, he could do it years later without hesitation. He could also translate it at no diminution in speed from its original language into English. On one occasion I tested his ability by asking him to tell me how A Tale of Two Cities started. Whereupon, without any pause, he immediately began to recite the first chapter and continued until asked to stop after about ten or fifteen minutes.

isaac newton, but yeah leibniz is up there

>pretty much invents the a-bomb and h-bomb
>leads to death of hundreds of thousands of people, doesn't care
>makes mutually assured destruction a thing
>converts to catholicism on deathbed even though he was agnostic his whole life because he was scared of death
>couldn't even figure out that death and the ego aren't real

more like biggest autist and sociopath

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Didn't realize plagiarizing newton was a field

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>man
>not person

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Linguistics or political dumbassery?

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linguistics (including universal generative grammar which has just been proven to be objectively correct), anarcho syndicalism, history, media theory, the list goes on

lol. don't forget genocide denial

can't forget what's not true, my nickel

Goethe had praise for poets of all nationalities, most prominently Hafiz whom he regarded the greatest. And Leibniz was just a really nice guy.

too bad Leiby was wrong about the whole "best of all possible worlds" shindig, which instantly disqualifies him as smartest