Born/Died Today with Pithy Quotes

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"A little, round, fat, oily man of God."
James Thomson
(09/11/1700 – 08/27/1748)
Scottish writer 

"What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it."
Georg William Friedrich Hegel
(08/27/1770 – 11/14/1831)
German philosopher 

"Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence."
Thomas C. Haliburton
(12/17/1796 – 08/27/1865)
Canadian writer 

"In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance."
Theodore Dreiser
(08/27/1871 – 12/28/1945)
US writer 

"I would give nothing for that man's religion whose very dog and cat are not the better for it."
Sir Rowland Hill
(12/03/1795 – 08/27/1879)
English clergyman, writer, postmaster 

"Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words."
Samuel Goldwyn
(08/27/1882 – 01/31/1974)
US film producer 

"Don't worry me—I am an eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay."
Stephen T. Early
(08/27/1889 – 08/11/1951)
US writer 

"All critics should be assassinated."
Man Ray
(08/27/1890 – 11/18/1976)
US artist, photographer 

"They couldn't pour piss out of a shoe if the instructions were written on the heel."
Lyndon Baines Johnson
(08/27/1908 – 01/22/1973)
US President (36), Vice President (37) (was married to "Lady Bird" Johnson; see all US Presidents, VPs) , on the Association of American States 

"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity."
Frank Leahy
(08/27/1908 – 06/21/1973)
US football coach (Notre Dame) 

"Loneliness is the most terrible poverty."
Mother Teresa
(08/27/1910 – 09/05/1997)
Macedonian religious leader 

"I didn't have to work till I was three. But after that, I never stopped."
Martha Raye
(08/27/1916 – 10/19/1994)
US actor 

"Here stands before you a Negro woman, raised in Harlem, who went on to become a tennis player . . . and finally wind up being a world champion, in fact, the first black woman champion of this world."
Althea Gibson
(08/27/1927 – 09/28/2003)
US tennis player 

"It seems the brighter you are, the deeper the hole you get into."
Tuesday Weld
(08/27/1943 – )
US actor 

"Where there is muck to be raked, it must be raked, and the public must know of it, that it may mete out justice."
Charles Evans Hughes
(04/11/1862 – 08/27/1948)
US Secretary of State, Supreme Court justice (see other Supreme Court justices) 

"Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic."
Cesare Pavese
(09/09/1908 – 08/27/1950)
Italian writer 

"They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?"
Jeanette Winterson
(08/27/1959 – )
English writer 

"All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins."
W. E. B. du Bois
(02/23/1868 – 08/27/1963)
US sociologist 

"They laughed at Joan of Arc, but she went right ahead and built it."
Gracie Allen
(07/26/1902 – 08/27/1964)
US comic, actor (was married to George Burns [shown]) 

"A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and fifty times: It is a beautiful catastrophe."
Le Corbusier
(10/06/1887 – 08/27/1965)
Swiss architect 

"My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me."
Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett
(06/05/1884 – 08/27/1969)
English writer 

"If you banish fear, nothing terribly bad can happen to you."
Margaret Bourke-White
(06/14/1904 – 08/27/1971)
US photojournalist 

"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite."
Sam Levenson
(12/28/1911 – 08/27/1980)
US writer 

"What I am trying to get across to you is: please take of yourselves and those that you love; because that is what we are here for, that's all we got, and that is all we can take with us. Are you with me?"
Stevie Ray Vaughan
(10/03/1954 – 08/27/1990)
US musician (brother of Jimmie) 

"In comparison with the industrial age, the information era is at the steam engine stage. By the time information systems reach jet-plane status, we will focus on utility over fads, triple our productivity, use our computers as naturally and easily as we now use our cars..."
Michael L. Dertouzos
(11/05/1936 – 08/27/2001)
Greek writer 

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