Who are four people you admire, and why do you admire them?

I had to go to a funeral for a friend, so can I turn in my answer later this week? ;-p

All kidding aside I like this question, but I now only have time to name my choices, and not enough to write the whole essay. ;)

Malala Yousafzai,
Stacey Abrams.
Susan B Anthony
Harriet Tubman.

If anyone else agrees with any of my selections, please feel free to provide your reasons.

- My husband. I admire his drive and willingness to work hard. He didn’t have a lot of guidance to achieve all of the things he has achieved, but he found his way.

- Rebecca Regnier. She is amazing at setting goals and achieving them and willing to take risks. Her work ethic is incredible. In fact sometimes I think she pushes too hard. She wanted to be a reporter on TV when I met her in college, and she did just that, she wound up being an anchor on a local ABC affiliate. She also took risks at being an entrepreneur multiple times, and now she is a very successful self published author.

- So many women in history it’s hard to name one. I’ll go with Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Her pursuit of justice, her desire to hear all sides of an argument, and her love and appreciation of the United States of America.

- Helen Keller for her bravery and tenacious curiosity and personality that drove her to learn multiple languages, fight for the rights of women and the disabled, and that she was out in front showing the world that disabilities do not have to disable us.

Barrack Obama / Thomas Jefferson / Harry S. Truman / Noam Chomsky Why? Self-explanatory.

David Duchovny, Leonardo da Vinci, Elizabeth May, Pope John Paul II. Why? They are each super smart in their own way. Though with David Duchovny I might be confusing with Fox Mulder from the X-Files.

My runners up are Ronald Regan and Fred McFeely Rogers. Better known as Mr. Rogers from Mister Rogers neighborhood. They are my favorites for being great personalities.

@RedDeerGuy1 David Duchovny in real life is pretty darned smart too. He went to Princeton and got a MA in English Lit from Yale where he started a PhD as well.

@janbb Cool thanks.

Further note, his grandfather was an immigrant Jewish journalist in NYC and we just came across a picture in an article of the grandfather on a panel which my father presided over!

Great so far!

I should have added: unless they’re as well known as presidents, please also mention who they are, in case we’ve never heard of them. (There are several never-heard-ofs for me listed above.)

Another question one could pose. is about people who are admired and don’t deserve it in the least. Such as Ghandi, a sex maniac and rather perverted, Churchill, an imperialistic racist, Mother Teresa, anything but a saint, and Walt Disney, just flat out strange.

@Nomore_lockout, one could. But that’s not what this thread is about. This one is focused on positive traits and personalities.

Impossible to pick just four and none of them are perfect but here are mine;

Yuja Wang: I can listen to her play piano music I don’t like she is so good.

Alan Turing: He broke the Nazi’s codes during World War II and invented the computer.

Stephen Fry: Just for being Stephen Fry. A national treasure.

Karl Kraus: An Austrian writer and satirist.

Pete Seeger – Folksinger and activist who always stayed true to his beliefs
Charles Dickens – for his energy and insight and writings
Eleanor Roosevelt – a great humanitarian
John Muir – the crazy naturalist who sparked the National Parks movement

And all the Native American tribal leaders who thought they were signing treaties with the United States that would be upheld – and were betrayed.

I’ve been thinking about this question and have come to realize that I don’t admire anyone.

I admire certain people’s work, what they accomplished, or brought into the world — but if I think about them, as a person, I either realize they weren’t very admirable or I don’t know enough about them to judge.

I admire the work of Caravaggio and Steve Jobs and Frank Lloyd Wright, but by all accounts, they all seemed like horrible people.

I would also say Fred Rogers and Jim Henson, who seem wonderful, but what do I really know of them?