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"He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master."
Ben Jonson
(06/11/1572
08/16/1637)
English writer
"It is the glory and merit of some men to write well, and of others, not to write at all."
Jean de la Bruyere
(08/16/1645
05/10 or 05/11/1696)
French scholar
"Suspect all extraordinary and groundless civilities."
Thomas Fuller
(06/19/1608
08/16/1661)
English writer
"Many men would take the death-sentence without a whimper to escape the life-sentence which fate carries in her other hand."
T. E. Lawrence
(08/16/1888
05/19/1935)
Welsh writer
"Anybody who has any doubt about the ingenuity or the resourcefulness of a plumber never got a bill from one."
George Meany
(08/16/1894
01/10/1980)
US labor organizer
"The Negro and all things negroid had become a fad, and Harlem had become a shrine to which feverish pilgrimages were in order... Seventh Avenue was the gorge into which Harlem cliff dwellers crowded to promenade."
Wallace Henry Thurman
(08/16/1902
12/22/1934)
US writer
"Eagles come in all shapes and sizes, but you will recognize them chiefly by their attitudes."
E. F. Schumacher
(08/16/1911
09/04/1977)
German-born economist
"Looking for enlightenment is like looking for a flashlight when all you need the flashlight for is to find the flashlight."
Lew Welch
(08/16/1926
05/23/1971)
US writer
"Jazz is not a what, it is a how."
Bill Evans
(08/16/1929
09/15/1980)
US pianist
"It was so wonderful being on 'Batman,' because you could be nasty and mean, and in the fifties women could never (unless you were some 'B' picture actress) be mean, bad, and nasty. It was so satisfying; I can't tell you how satisfying it was."
Julie Newmar
(08/16/1933
)
US actor
"The Devil made me do it the first time
the second time I done it on my own."
Billy Joe Shaver
(08/16/1939
10/28/2020)
US singer-songwriter
("Old Five and Dimers Like Me (1973)")
"As Duke Ellington once said, 'The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Elkton.'"
Babe Ruth
(02/06/1895
08/16/1948)
US baseball player
(the actual quote, often misattributed to the Duke of Wellington, was "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton")
"What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one."
Margaret Mitchell
(11/08/1900
08/16/1949)
US writer
(Gone With the Wind)
"The introduction of religious passion into politics is the end of honest politics, and the introduction of politics into religion is the prostitution of true religion."
Douglas McGarel Hogg, Lord Hailsham
(02/28/1872
08/16/1950)
English politician
"I change my hairstyle every day for the show, I'm fastidious and vain about my nails and teeth and grooming and makeup, but a perfect body, forget it. Dust to dust, wuggies to wuggies."
Kathie Lee Gifford
(08/16/1953
)
French-born US TV person
(was married to Frank Gifford)
"This is the most uncomfortable coffin I've ever been in."
Bela Lugosi
(10/20/1882
08/16/1956)
Hungarian actor
, to Ed Wood on one of his movie sets
"It is my indignant opinion that 90 percent of the moving pictures exhibited in America are so vulgar, witless and dull that it is preposterous to write about them in any publication not intended to be read while chewing gum."
Wolcott Gibbs
(03/15/1902
08/16/1958)
US writer
"I think a character in a comedy should not know they're in a comedy."
Steve Carell
(08/16/1962
)
US comic actor
"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
Elvis Presley
(01/08/1935
08/16/1977)
US singer, rock'n'roll icon
(father of Lisa Marie)
"I'd like to borrow his body for just 48 hours. There are three guys I'd like to beat up and four women I'd like to make love to."
Jim Murray
(12/29/1919
08/16/1998)
US columnist
, on Muhammad Ali
"If we knew the meaning to everything that is happening to us, then there would be no meaning."
Idi Amin Dada
(05/17/1925
08/16/2003)
African dictator
"In no other society do they have one person play with all four limbs."
Max Roach
(01/10/1924
08/16/2007)
US drummer
, on drumming
"Everybody wants respect. In their own way, three-year-olds would like respect, and acknowledgment, in their terms."
Aretha Franklin
(03/25/1942
08/16/2018)
US Queen of Soul
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