Tough question...

Socrates is my #1 for obvious reasons, i.e. "The unexamined life is not worth living." This is easy to say, but taking an honest and objective look at oneself is difficult. If more people did this I believe our world would be a better place (i.e. put your ego aside, and take a hard look at who you really are/what you are really doing). Also, the Socratic Method (Teaching by asking instead of telling) is one of, if not the best way to teach (the more a person can relate to the material/subject the better).

Soren Kierkegaard is also on my list of favorites. He was intellectually brillant, and a prolific writer. Like Socrates he questioned life and what faith really meant. In the 1850's he challenged that the church was more interested in power, material wealth, and political intrigues than the teachings of God. To think like an Existentialist is to contemplate the self, the Creator, and the universe with passion. According to this philosophy, all objective truth is to be questioned, as God is the only entity with knowledge of absolutes.

Also, Native American Chief Seattle (See-Yahtlh) comes to mind. Here is the closing to his 1853 speech "The Indian's Night Promises to be Dark" -

"Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as they swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than to yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy-hearted maidens, and even our little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these sombre solitude’s and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.

Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds."

Native American Indian Wisdom

Enjoy, Vince