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I'm not sure if this has been done here before, but here goes:

You can have a dinner party with anyone in history. Table seats 12 (yourself plus 11). For the purposes of our party, there are no language barriers, everyone can understand else. Everyone is served food of their own preference. Who would you have?

1. Jesus
2. Buddha
3. Tolstoy
4. Samuel Clemens
5. Thomas Jefferson
6. Shakespeare
7. Gandhi
8. Da Vinci
9. Socrates
10. Mohammed
11. Abraham Lincoln

I got to the end and realized there weren't any women on the list. A bit of a shock. Joseph Smith? If I ask Jesus if he'd ever been to the Western Hemisphere, and he said no, it might be an awkward moment. Much easier to ask the question this way. Confusious, Lao Tze, Marcus Aurelius and Casey Stengel were very close.

So show me your list!

1. Mitochondrial Eve
2. Cleopatra
3. Amelia Earhart
4. Virginia Woolf
5. Mary, mother of Jesus
6. Joan of Arc
7. Madame Curie
8. Susan B. Anthony
9. Ann Frank
10. Emma Smith

I thought that this would be easy, but the longer I thought about, the more difficult it became.

Charles Dickens.
Victor Hugo (of course).
Mark Twain.
J.R.R. Tolkien. (fascinating and gentile man).
Winston Churchill (for the wry comments).
Adolf Hitler (I have some questions for that guy).
Julius Caesar.
Ashoka.
Crazy Horse.
Saint Paul (got some questions for him, too).
Joseph Smith (just to watch him stammer and squirm).
Brigham Young (same reason).

The first four are authors. The first three are authors from the nineteenth century. Not sure why.

I wasn't selecting by who would make polite conversation, but who could answer questions that I have wondered about.

Just me came up with all women's names and they are all good ones. I made my choices just on my gut feelings and they all ended up men. If we could have a larger table, I would love to add just me's choices to the meal.

my list would be all relatives from various points in the past..no one i had ever met.

the problem with famous people lists is that the conversation is simply a fan-fest. The cult of personality will not be present and unfortunately they will have little to offer beyond what they already given you.
Perspective from past family members will likely be more entertaining and more edifying.

if one is just interested in being entertained then likely Houdini and Cicero should be on your list

1. My wife
2. My kids
3. My parents
4. My siblings & their spouses.

Those diners have been the most memorable to me and the most important.


(Okay that would be a lot more than 12 people.)

I like Medotorg's list but I would switch it around a bit:

1. Jesus
2. Siddhartha Gautama
3. Woody Allen
4. Samuel Clemens
5. Thomas Jefferson
6. Gene Wolfe
7. Gandhi
8. Julie Kavner
9. Socrates
10. Albert Einstein
11. Sarah Silverman
12. Janeane Garofolo

14 table seats in total. It would be wise to seat Jesus and Siddhartha at each end of the rectangular table. Let's put Sarah and Janeane where they could play footsies with the penguin.

Fence Sitter wrote:1. My wife
2. My kids
3. My parents
4. My siblings & their spouses.

Those diners have been the most memorable to me and the most important.


(Okay that would be a lot more than 12 people.)

+1

1. Hunter Thompson

That's probably enough right there.

Just to be clear, the idea is that this is a one time dinner party. These are not people you are going to eat with throughout eternity. The 'Eternity' just meant of all the people who've ever lived...

Molok wrote:1. Hunter Thompson

That's probably enough right there.

It's not that fun.