Born Today with Pithy Quotes. Even Jack Benny.

"I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses."
Johannes Kepler
(12/27/1571 – 11/15/1630)
German astronomer 

"Chance favors only the prepared mind."
Louis Pasteur
(12/27/1822 – 09/28/1895)
French scientist 

"I have seen purer liquors, better segars, finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtesans here in San Francisco than in any other place I have ever visited; and it is my unbiased opinion that California can and does furnish the best bad things that are available in America."
Hinton Helper
(12/27/1829 – 03/09/1909)
US writer , on late 19th-century San Francisco 

"Presents, I often say, endear absents."
Charles Lamb
(02/10/1775 – 12/27/1834)
English writer 

"Poor Elsa [Lanchester]. She left England because it already had a queen—Victoria. And she wanted to be queen of the Charles Laughton household, once he became a star, but he already had the role."
Marlene Dietrich
(12/27/1901 – 05/06/1992)
German-US actor 

"Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her."
Oscar Levant
(12/27/1906 – 08/14/1972)
US composer, pianist , on Marilyn's conversion to Judaism 

"Never answer a hypothetical question."
Moshe Arens
(12/27/1925 – )
Lithuanian-Israeli politician 

"If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English."
Wilfrid Sheed
(12/27/1930 – 01/19/2011)
US writer 

"The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies."
Lester Bowles Pearson
(04/23/1897 – 12/27/1972)
Canadian Prime Minister (14) 

"Give me golf clubs, fresh air and a beautiful partner, and you can keep the clubs and the fresh air."
Jack Benny
(02/14/1894 – 12/27/1974)
US comic 

"One face to the world, another at home makes for misery."
Amy Vanderbilt
(07/22/1908 – 12/27/1974)
US etiquette maven 

"If it were better, it wouldn't be as good."
Brendan Gill
(10/04/1914 – 12/27/1997)
US writer 

"I consider Peter Finch and James Mason the two best English actors of the 1960s. But I never understood Finch. How could he do something as beautiful as "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," but also make all that other sh*t? I mean he could read, couldn't he?"
Sir Alan Bates
(02/17/1934 – 12/27/2003)
English actor