October 20

"The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it."

Lord Palmerston
(10/20/1784 – 10/18/1865)
English statesman
(died near his birthday)

"Life isn't all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman's education."

Thomas Hughes
(10/20/1822 – 03/22/1896)
English writer ("Tom Brown's School Days")

"La vie est la farce à mener par tous.
Life is the farce which we all must lead."

Arthur Rimbaud
(10/20/1854 – 11/10/1891)
French writer ("Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell)")

"Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy."

John Dewey
(10/20/1859 – 06/01/1952)
US educator, philosopher ("The Public and its Problems")

"I guess I'm pretty much of a lone wolf. I don't say I don't like people at all, but to tell you the truth I only like it then if I have a chance to look deep into their hearts and their minds."

Bela Lugosi
(10/20/1882 – 08/16/1956)
Hungarian actor ("Dracula")

"Get up from that piano. You hurtin' its feelings."

Jelly Roll Morton
(10/20/1890 – 07/10/1941)
US pianist ("Finger Breaker")

"Travellers, like poets, are mostly an angry race."

Sir Richard Francis Burton
(03/19/1821 – 10/20/1890)
English writer ("The Kasîdah")
(husband of Isabel; the actor died August 5)

"Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself."

James A. Froude
(04/23/1818 – 10/20/1894)
English historian ("The Nemesis of Faith")

"Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration."

Charles Dudley Warner
(09/12/1829 – 10/20/1900)
US writer ("Baddeck, And That Sort of Thing")

Lorelei Farnsworth: "But I don't understand why Roger killed him."
Inspector Richard Queen: "Must have been something he married."

Frederic Dannay
(10/20/1905 – 09/03/1982)
US writer ("The Roman Hat Mystery")
(as "Ellery Queen," with Manfred Lee)

"I always wanted to get into politics, but I was never light enough to make the team."

Art Buchwald
(10/20/1925 – 01/17/2007)
US journalist ("We'll Laugh Again")

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong."

Eugene Debs
(11/05/1855 – 10/20/1926)
US labor organizer ("Labor and Freedom")

"If Shakespeare had had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth."

Dr. Joyce Brothers
(10/20/1927 – 05/13/2013)
US shrink, columnist ("What Every Woman Should Know About Men")

"If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself."

Mickey Mantle
(10/20/1931 – 08/13/1995)
US baseball great

"When a man does not admit that he is an animal, he is less than an animal. Not more but less."

Michael McClure
(10/20/1932 – 05/04/2020)
US poet ("The Beard")

"I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think."

Anne Sullivan
(04/14/1866 – 10/20/1936)
US educator
(notably of Helen Keller)

"I'd sing and shake my leg a bit, and it looked like I was doing something."

Wanda Jackson
(10/20/1937 – )
US singer ("Hard Headed Woman")

"When My Love Comes Back from the Ladies' Room, Will I Be Too Old To Care?"

Lewis Grizzard
(10/20/1946 – 03/20/1994)
US comic ("I Haven't Understood Anything Since 1962") , song title

"The only deadly sin I know is cynicism."

Henry Stimson
(09/21/1867 – 10/20/1950)
US Secretary of War

"I have turned down a lot of money for things that would have made me feel cheesy."

Tom Petty
(10/20/1950 – 10/02/2017)
US singer, songwriter ("Refugee")

"It comes down to the fact that you supply the blue, and they supply the other colors and mix them with your blue, and maybe there's some blue left in the painting and maybe there isn't. Maybe there wasn't supposed to be any there in the first place. So have some fun and make a good blue and walk away."

Viggo Mortensen
(10/20/1958 – )
US actor ("A History of Violence")
(was married to Exene Cervenka)

"Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a world-wide depression all by myself."

Herbert Hoover
(08/10/1874 – 10/20/1964)
US President (31)

"I believe that a child going without an education is a crime."

Kamala Harris
(10/20/1964 – )
US Vice President (49), attorney, Senator (CA)

"So what if I'm smokin' weed onstage and doing what I gotta do? It's not me shooting nobody, stabbing nobody, killing nobody. It's a peaceful gesture and they have to respect that and appreciate that."

Snoop Dogg
(10/20/1971 – )
US rapper ("Gin and Juice")

"Tits and sand—that's what we used to call sex and violence in Hollywood."

Burt Lancaster
(11/02/1913 – 10/20/1994)
US actor ("From Here to Eternity")

"Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slip-cover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well-dressed thermometer."

Peg Bracken
(02/25/1918 – 10/20/2007)
US writer ("The I Hate to Cook Book")

"I'm not exploiting the women; I'm exploiting the men."

Bob Guccione
(12/17/1930 – 10/20/2010)
US magazine editor ("Penthouse")

"Those who do not love me do not deserve to live."

Muammar al-Gaddafi
(06/07/1942 – 10/20/2011)
Libyan military, political leader

"Sir, there is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out."

(The Amazing) James Randi
(08/07/1928 – 10/20/2020)
Canadian-US magician, skeptic ("Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions")