Born this week
Thursday October 17th, 2024
Lenny Bruce,
October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966
When you're eight years old nothing is your business.
Leonard Alfred Schneider, better known by his stage name Lenny Bruce, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic and satirist. He ...
Lillie Langtry,
October 13, 1853 – February 12, 1929
I am a grandmother now, and that means age is creeping on, creeping on.
Lillie Langtry, usually spelled Lily Langtry in the United States, born Emilie Charlotte Le Breton, was celebrated as a young woman of ...
Hannah Arendt,
October 14, 1906 – December 4, 1975
To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious.
Johanna "Hannah" Arendt was a German-born political theorist. Though often described as a philosopher, she rejected that label on the ...
e. e. cummings,
October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
Edward Estlin Cummings, known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e e ...
W. Edwards Deming,
October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993
It is not enough to do your best you must know what to do, and then do your best.
William Edwards Deming was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially ...
Dwight D. Eisenhower,
October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969
Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United ...
Lillian Gish,
October 14, 1893 – February 27, 1993
A happy life is one spent in learning, earning, and yearning.
Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress, director and writer whose film acting career spanned 75 years, ...
Michel Foucault,
October 15, 1926 – June 25, 1984
Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, philologist and literary critic. His theories addressed the ...
Katherine Mansfield,
October 14, 1888 – January 9, 1923
Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.
Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand ...
William Penn,
October 14, 1644 – July 30, 1718
For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
William Penn was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English ...
Moshe Sharett,
October 15, 1894 – July 7, 1965
Arabs respect only the language of force.
Moshe Sharett was the second Prime Minister of Israel, serving for a little under two years between David Ben-Gurion's two terms.
William Temple,
October 15, 1881 – October 26, 1944
You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with you, by using them ill.
William Temple was a bishop in the Church of England. He served as Bishop of Manchester, Archbishop of York and Archbishop of Canterbury. ...
P. G. Wodehouse,
October 15, 1881 – February 14, 1975
Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, humorous verses, ...
David Ben-Gurion,
October 16, 1886 – December 1, 1973
Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.
David Ben-Gurion was the primary founder and the first Prime Minister of Israel. Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in ...
Michael Collins,
October 16, 1890 – August 22, 1922
I knew I was alone in a way that no earthling has ever been before.
Michael Collins was an Irish revolutionary leader, Minister for Finance, Director of Information, and Teachta Dála for Cork South in the ...
William O. Douglas,
October 16, 1898 – January 19, 1980
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.
William Orville Douglas served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Nominated by President Franklin D. ...
Friedrich Nietzsche,
October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philologist, philosopher, cultural critic, poet and composer. He wrote several critical texts on ...
Mario Puzo,
October 15, 1920 – July 2, 1999
Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.
Mario Gianluigi Puzo was an Italian American author and screenwriter, known for his novels about the Mafia, including The Godfather, which ...
Oscar Wilde,
October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of ...
Georg Buchner,
October 17, 1813 – February 19, 1837
I'll know how to die with courage that is easier than living.
Karl Georg Büchner was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose. He was also a revolutionary, a natural scientist, and the ...
Jupiter Hammon,
October 17, 1711 – January 1, 1806
The Bible is a revelation of the mind and will of God to men. Therein we may learn, what God is.
Jupiter Hammon was a black poet who in 1761 became the first African-American writer to be published in the present-day United States. ...
Shinichi Suzuki,
October 17, 1898 – January 26, 1998
What is man's ultimate direction in life? It is to look for love, truth, virtue, and beauty.
Shinichi Suzuki was the inventor of the international Suzuki method of music education and developed a philosophy for educating people of ...
James Truslow Adams,
October 18, 1878 – May 18, 1949
Age acquires no value save through thought and discipline.
James Truslow Adams was an American writer and historian. He was not related to the famous Adams family. He was not an academic, but a ...
Henri Bergson,
October 18, 1859 – January 4, 1941
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many ...
Matthew Henry,
October 18, 1662 – June 22, 1714
Men of polite learning and a liberal education.
Matthew Henry was a Welsh Non-Conformist minister.
Helen Hunt Jackson,
October 18, 1830 – August 12, 1885
When love is at its best, one loves so much that he cannot forget.
Helen Maria Hunt Jackson, born Helen Fiske, was an American poet and writer who became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of ...
Pierre Trudeau,
October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000
The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, PC CH CC QC FSRC, usually known as Pierre Trudeau or Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was the 15th ...
Thomas Browne,
October 19, 1605 – October 19, 1682
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.
Sir Thomas Browne was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and ...
A. J. Liebling,
October 18, 1904 – December 28, 1963
An Englishman teaching an American about food is like the blind leading the one-eyed.
Abbott Joseph Liebling (October 18, 1904 - December 28, 1963) was an American journalist who was closely associated with The New Yorker ...
Lewis Mumford,
October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990
Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.
Lewis Mumford, KBE was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study ...
Leigh Hunt,
October 19, 1784 – August 28, 1859
The groundwork of all happiness is health.
James Henry Leigh Hunt (19 October 1784 - 28 August 1859), best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist, poet and writer. ...
Peter Tosh,
October 19, 1944 – September 11, 1987
To have the truth in your possession you can be found guilty, sentenced to death.
Peter Tosh, OM was a Jamaican reggae musician. Along with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer he was one of the core members of the band The ...
Thomas Tusser,
October 19, 1524 – May 3, 1580
At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year.
Thomas Tusser was an English poet and farmer, best known for his instructional poem Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, an expanded ...