Born this week
Saturday May 24th, 2025
Honore de Balzac
May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850
Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La ...
Bertrand Russell
May 18, 1872 – February 2, 1970
Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, social critic and ...
Alexander Pope
May 21, 1688 – May 30, 1744
Health consists with temperance alone.
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of ...
Malcolm X
May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was an African-American Muslim minister and a human rights ...
Arthur Conan Doyle
May 22, 1859 – July 7, 1930
I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KGStJ, DL was a British writer and physician, most noted for his fictional stories about the detective ...
John Stuart Mill
May 20, 1806 – May 8, 1873
Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
John Stuart Mill, was a British philosopher, political economist and civil servant. He was an influential contributor to social theory, ...
Wilson Mizner
May 19, 1876 – April 3, 1933
Art is science made clear.
Wilson Mizner was an American playwright, raconteur, and entrepreneur. His best-known plays are The Deep Purple, produced in 1910, and The ...
Margaret Fuller
May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850
Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though in truth his dreaming must be not out of proportion to his waking.
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated ...
Joseph Brodsky
May 24, 1940 – January 28, 1996
For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky was a Jewish poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad in 1940, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was ...
Harry Emerson Fosdick
May 24, 1878 – October 5, 1969
Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.
Harry Emerson Fosdick was an American pastor. Fosdick became a central figure in the "Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy" within American ...
Moshe Dayan
May 20, 1915 – October 16, 1981
Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.
Moshe Dayan was an Israeli military leader and politician. He was the second child born on the first kibbutz, but he moved with his family ...
Albrecht Durer
May 21, 1471 – April 6, 1528
I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, engraver, printmaker, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His high-quality woodcuts ...
Nancy Astor
May 19, 1879 – May 2, 1964
The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything... or nothing.
Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Viscountess Astor, CH was an American-born socialite who made a second marriage to Waldorf Astor as a young ...
Lorraine Hansberry
May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965
Seems like God don't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was an American playwright and writer. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black". ...
Ho Chi Minh
May 19, 1890 – September 2, 1969
You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.
Hồ Chí Minh, born Nguyễn Sinh Côn, or Nguyễn Sinh Cung, also known as Nguyễn Tát Thành and Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a ...
Harvey Milk
May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978
Hope will never be silent.
Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California when he ...
Richard Wagner
May 22, 1813 – February 13, 1883
Imagination creates reality.
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas. Unlike ...
John Buchanan Robinson
May 23, 1846 – January 28, 1933
For each one of us stands alone in the midst of a universe.
John Buchanan Robinson (May 23, 1846 - January 28, 1933) was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. ...
Joseph Butler
May 18, 1692 – June 16, 1752
Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food.
Joseph Butler was an English bishop, theologian, apologist, and philosopher. He was born in Wantage in the English county of Berkshire. He ...
Omar Khayyam
May 18, 1048 – December 4, 1131
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.
Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Abu'l-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Khayyām Nīshāpūrī, commonly known as Omar Khayyám, was a sufi mystic, Persian ...
Thomas Hood
May 23, 1799 – May 3, 1845
There is even a happiness - that makes the heart afraid.
Thomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.
Joe Slovo
May 23, 1926 – January 6, 1995
When a man has been consistently battering his wife, he shouldn't expect a bouquet of roses from her the morning after he promises to stop.
Joe Slovo was a South African politician, an opponent of the apartheid system. He was a long-time leader of the South African Communist ...
John Jewel
May 24, 1522 – September 23, 1571
As the body dieth when the soul departeth, so the soul of man dieth, when it hath not the knowledge of God.
John Jewel (sometimes spelled Jewell) (24 May 1522 - 23 September 1571) was an English bishop of Salisbury. He was the son of John Jewel ...
David Viscott
May 24, 1938 – October 10, 1996
If you could get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed.
David Viscott, was an American psychiatrist, author, businessman, and media personality. He was a graduate of Dartmouth, Tufts Medical ...