in <b.evill-2809981244530001 at tynslip4.apana.org.au>, b.evill at spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au (Brett Evill) did something allowing me to incorporate a very witty verb in this line and produced:
>>In article <360bc502.180750886 at news.frontiernet.net>,
>j5rson at iversonsoftware.com wrote:
>>>>I agree that da Vinci is a good candidate. My personal choice would be
>>Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" one of the most influential books
>>of all time. As a philosopher she developed Objectivism, and
>>championed Reason in the 20th century.
>>As influential as 'In Praise of the New Knighthood'? As influential as the
>'Confessions' of Augustine of Hippo? As the Bible? The Koran? Newton's
>'Principia'?, Harvey's 'On the Ciculation of the Blood'? Galileo's "The
>Revolution of the Celestial Orbs"? 'The Origin of Species'? Marx's
>"Capital"? Smith's "The Wealth of Nations"? These have profoundly
>influenced people even beyond the confines of the languages they were
>originally written in.
You forgot The Prince. (my favorite book)
More nominations from the humanities:
Lord Byron
Machiavelli (see above)
Milton (when was he?)
(besides, Rand is full of, for lack of a better term, complete fecal
matter. See my incoherent tirade about her at:
http://members.tripod.com/~paulgowder/public/rand.html or, even better,
try to read one of her books. I guarantee you won't get past one
chapter without having suicidal thoughts, because she could not write an
interesting sentence to save someone else's life, not that she'd want
to.)