A lot of the people named by other respondents would not last two days on Quora, because of BNBR; and a lot of people would not find Quora particularly rewarding.
A lot of the people named by other respondents would also get dragged on to Quora to do a celeb session, then leave. That does not count in my book as a great Quora contributor.
What kind of dead famous person would be a great Quora contributor? The type who spent their free time having the kinds of free-ranging discussion that might be comparable to Quora.
Stephen Punwasi’s answer points to one such equivalent:
Karl Marx. He basically spent all day discussing ideas in the early 20th Century version of Quora – Viennese Cafes.
Well, maybe not Karl Marx himself, but the literary salons of London and Paris, along with Vienna pre-War cafés, would indeed have been great recruiting grounds.
Another such recruiting ground is people whose free-ranging discussion, usually around the dinner table, was felt worthy of noting down. Yes, it was felt worthy because they were famous; but it usually was intrinsically interesting anyway.
As examples, published table talks exist for:
- Martin Luther (1483–1546), see Table Talk (Luther);
- John Selden (1584–1654);
- John Milton (1608–1674);
- Samuel Johnson (1707–1784);
- Frederick the Great (1712–1786);
- Johann von Goethe (1749–1832);
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821);
- Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827);
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834);
- Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888);
- George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950);
- Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), see Hitler’s Table Talk;
- Orson Welles (1915–1985).
For me, I’d like to see Constantine P. Cavafy. I’m not finding a googlable reference to it, but his Table Talk on both Greek and Byzantine history, and Greek linguistics, would have been right up my alley…