TOP 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE OF ALL TIME!!!! (2025)

This is my list of the "Top 100 Most Influential People of All Time" (in my opinion). These are people who I believe made the most impact on our global society, whether directly or indirectly. These includes mathematicians, scientists, artists, religious leaders, political leaders, philosophers, etc. This isn't in any order because that would be impossible, but these are people that innovations spread around the world, whose innovations we take for granted, and history would be different without them. This is the list:

TOP 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE OF ALL TIME:

1. Jesus of Nazareth
2. Prophet Muhammad
3. Siddhartha Gautama
4. Zarathustra
5. Genghis Khan
6. Alexander The Great
7. Confucius
8. Alexander Fleming
9. Constantine The Great
10. Johannes Gutenberg
11. Louis Pasteur
12. Isaac Newton
13. Nebuchadnezzar II
14. Sargon of Akkad
15. Qin Shi Huang
16. Martin Luther
17. Augustus
18. Narmer
19. Imhotep
20. Aryabhatta
21. Pythagoras
22. Fritz Haber
23. Napoleon Bonaparte
24. Karl Marx
25. Ashoka The Great
26. Cyrus The Great
27. Adolf Hitler
28. Alexander Graham Bell
29. Norman Borlaug
30. Djoser
31. Vladimir Lenin
32. Simon Bivolar
33. Christopher Columbus
34. Mahatma Ghandi
35. Ada Lovelace
36. The Wright Brothers
37. Ziryab
38. Attila The Hun
39. Nicolaus Copernicus
40. Albert Einstein
41. Charlemagne
42. George Washington Carver
43. Nikola Tesla
44. Archimedes
45. Hummarabi
46. Julius Caesar
47. James Naismith
48. William The Conqueror
49. Rosalind Franklin
50. William Harvey
51. Galileo Galilei
52. Euclid
53. George Washington
54. Gavrillo Princip
55. Cai Lun
56. Conrad Gessner
57. Edith Clarke
58. Henry The Navigator
59. Joseph Stalin
60. John Calvin
61. William Shakespeare
62. John Muir
63. Steve Jobs
64. Marie Curie
65. Charles Babbage
66. Cierco
67. Leonardo DaVinci
68. Mikhail Gorbachev
69. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
70. Clovis I
71. Winston Churchill
72. Pablo Picasso
73. Ludwig Van Beethoven
74. William Tyndale
75. Ferdinand Magellan
76. Nelson Mandela
77. The Grimm Brothers
78. Alfred The Great
79. Adam Smith
80. Henry Ford
81. Thomas Paine
82. Walt Disney
83. Franklin D. Roosevelt
84. Thomas Edison
85. Marco Polo
86. Mao Zendong
87. Vasco Da Gama
88. Pope John Paul II
89. Woodrow Wilson
90. Joan Of Arc
91. Henry VIII
92. Michaelangelo
93. Ronald Reagan
94. Johannes Kepler
95. Elvis Presley
96. Johannes Sebastian Bach
97. Michael Jackson
98. Mansa Musa
99. Emperor Meiji
100. Niccolo Machiavelli

I had no idea the Wright Brothers were one person.

Also funny how so many of the most famous people are westerns and from the modern era. It's almost as if this is a list of famous people the OP knows more than anything else. I'm also curious how ranking these people is impossible, but drawing a line in the sand between the 100th and 101st most influential is not a problem.

Didn't we already go through this before?

Theses rankings are always big fun, we can't enough of them. Who's up and who's down? A sample: You have the good judgment to raise Augustus over Julius Caesar. The latter excited the imagination of his contemporaries, he has remained more famous than Augustus, he had better box office. In their actual influence upon history Augustus was by far the more important of the two. But Elvis Presley? Several of your entries are obscure but the top 10 are sound. But you underestimate Isaac Newton (IMO).

Michael Jackson was more influential than Michael Faraday?

What did Djoser do? And Emperor Meiji?

How would history have been different without Beethoven?

There has to be a fault when a list includes Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Walt Disney, but not Aristotle, Plato and Socrates.

Gavrillo Princip, Ronald Reagan and Steve Jobs, but no Bismarck, Cleisthenes, Pericles?

Also, who are all those obscure people like Carver, Naismith, Edith Clarke, John Muir, mentioned instead of Lavoisier, Darwin, Maxwell, Planck?

William Tyndale but no Thomas Aquinas?

AbrahamWinstonBismarck said:

This is my list of the "Top 100 Most Influential People of All Time" (in my opinion). These are people who I believe made the most impact on our global society, whether directly or indirectly. These includes mathematicians, scientists, artists, religious leaders, political leaders, philosophers, etc. This isn't in any order because that would be impossible, but these are people that innovations spread around the world, whose innovations we take for granted, and history would be different without them. This is the list:

TOP 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE OF ALL TIME:

1. Jesus of Nazareth
2. Prophet Muhammad
3. Siddhartha Gautama
4. Zarathustra
5. Genghis Khan
6. Alexander The Great
7. Confucius
8. Alexander Fleming
9. Constantine The Great
10. Johannes Gutenberg
11. Louis Pasteur
12. Isaac Newton
13. Nebuchadnezzar II
14. Sargon of Akkad
15. Qin Shi Huang
16. Martin Luther
17. Augustus
18. Narmer
19. Imhotep
20. Aryabhatta
21. Pythagoras
22. Fritz Haber
23. Napoleon Bonaparte
24. Karl Marx
25. Ashoka The Great
26. Cyrus The Great
27. Adolf Hitler
28. Alexander Graham Bell
29. Norman Borlaug
30. Djoser
31. Vladimir Lenin
32. Simon Bivolar
33. Christopher Columbus
34. Mahatma Ghandi
35. Ada Lovelace
36. The Wright Brothers
37. Ziryab
38. Attila The Hun
39. Nicolaus Copernicus
40. Albert Einstein
41. Charlemagne
42. George Washington Carver
43. Nikola Tesla
44. Archimedes
45. Hummarabi
46. Julius Caesar
47. James Naismith
48. William The Conqueror
49. Rosalind Franklin
50. William Harvey
51. Galileo Galilei
52. Euclid
53. George Washington
54. Gavrillo Princip
55. Cai Lun
56. Conrad Gessner
57. Edith Clarke
58. Henry The Navigator
59. Joseph Stalin
60. John Calvin
61. William Shakespeare
62. John Muir
63. Steve Jobs
64. Marie Curie
65. Charles Babbage
66. Cierco
67. Leonardo DaVinci
68. Mikhail Gorbachev
69. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
70. Clovis I
71. Winston Churchill
72. Pablo Picasso
73. Ludwig Van Beethoven
74. William Tyndale
75. Ferdinand Magellan
76. Nelson Mandela
77. The Grimm Brothers
78. Alfred The Great
79. Adam Smith
80. Henry Ford
81. Thomas Paine
82. Walt Disney
83. Franklin D. Roosevelt
84. Thomas Edison
85. Marco Polo
86. Mao Zendong
87. Vasco Da Gama
88. Pope John Paul II
89. Woodrow Wilson
90. Joan Of Arc
91. Henry VIII
92. Michaelangelo
93. Ronald Reagan
94. Johannes Kepler
95. Elvis Presley
96. Johannes Sebastian Bach
97. Michael Jackson
98. Mansa Musa
99. Emperor Meiji
100. Niccolo Machiavelli

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Horus was more influential than Jesus in my estimation. Though I can't actually prove that Horus was in fact a real person that became embellished, but if he was, then he is the father of all religion.

How about a 100 list of left-handed worthies? That would be original, from Leonardo da Vinci to Paul McCartney. Wait a minute, I just learned Caesar was a southpaw. Do lefties tend to over achieve? I don't know but....

"A study in the Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology found that, out of 150 subjects, left-handed participants were significantly more likely to perform better on an intelligence test than right-handed people. Right-handers also took more time to complete the test."
-Healthline

Don't shoot the messenger.

Ben Franklin not on the list?

My main criteria is, if someone had not lived, how great would the difference path of history have been, in your estimate? So for 20th century, I think Stalin was the most important.

If Ben Franklin had not lived, history would have taken a different path, in my view. Just in terms of US, how are the Presidents other than Washington maybe more imp. than Franklin?

Fritz Haber for example, not much different at all.

Walt Disney? Elvis? Bach? C'mon.

PeabodyKid said:

edit.

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Good list imo. Maybe except those Egyptians, these are names everyone knows.

althtough did you mean with Cierco Cicero?

AbrahamWinstonBismarck said:

This isn't in any order because that would be impossible

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Someone called Michal H Hart or something like that actually did order them.
I like some of your choices, others I feel are people of note but I'm not sure if I'd attach the label influential to them

Willempie said:

I get it that you don't put me in the top 3 (though that is weird), but why am I not in this list at all?

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lol
winning a draft doesn't put you on par with people who have founded empires and established major religions

Solidaire said:

There has to be a fault when a list includes Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Walt Disney, but not Aristotle, Plato and Socrates.

Gavrillo Princip, Ronald Reagan and Steve Jobs, but no Bismarck, Cleisthenes, Pericles?

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I've heard far more Elvis Presley over the years than read Plato. And I've seen Reagan on the TV (and films) but never Bismarck

Basic stats

All those cited have their own claims to being Influential. All have influenced their times and/or future generations. Their names and deeds are known and celebrated or cursed sometimes for thousands of years. There are lesser known "influencers" that were lost to history a month after their deaths. The little fellow whose small innovation is forgotten, until a hundred years later the innovation results in a major Scientific advance. Fiction has many examples: Being There, Forest Gump, Blackadder, and Flashman, among many others. They are fictions, but they have great appeal at least partially because they model the unseen influence cast by the "little guy": the "buffoon" or "Villain" of the piece. In real life the "Anonymous" section of Poetry Anthologies is often large and the source of other, better known works by the famous.

I propose the answer to the OP's question is that the most Influential persons in human history are, and will forever be unknown by name. They are that small band who left their homes in the primeval forests to try their lot out on the savannas. Those remote ancestors of us all, set our lineage on a path that led to today. Along the way they invented the first tools and story-telling. Out of the sparks of a defensive fire was born our wonder at the grandeur of the Universe and our place in it. Who began keeping coals alive from day to day and place to place? The first thoughtful "chef"?

Influence and Causality are companions. They seem simple, but are not when examined carefully and applied to the phenomenal world.

How does Pythagoras make the list?

@AbrahamWinstonBismarck How do you rank George Washington Carver ahead of George Washington? Are you serious?