December 27

"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 ("Harmonice Mundi (Harmony of the World)")

"Chance favors only the prepared mind."

Louis Pasteur
(12/27/1822 – 09/28/1895)
French scientist ("Etudes sur la Bière (Studies on Beer)")

"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 ("The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It") , on late 19th-century San Francisco

"Presents, I often say, endear absents."

Charles Lamb
(02/10/1775 – 12/27/1834)
English writer ("Essays of Elia")
(brother of Mary Lamb)

"The lens is the actor's best critic, showing his mind more clearly than on the stage. You can get wonderful cooperation out of the lens if you are true, but God help you if you are not."

Sydney Greenstreet
(12/27/1879 – 01/18/1954)
English actor ("The Maltese Falcon")

"I am at heart a gentleman."

Marlene Dietrich
(12/27/1901 – 05/06/1992)
German-US actor ("The Blue Angel")

Peter Marshall: "If you're going to make a parachute jump, you should be at least how high?"
Charlie Weaver: "Three days of steady drinking should do it."
(12/27/1905 – 09/23/1974)
US comedian, actor, pianist, composer ("Hollywood Squares")
(grandfather of Rosanna, Patricia, and David Arquette)

"Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her."

Oscar Levant
(12/27/1906 – 08/14/1972)
US composer, pianist ("Rhapsody in Blue") , on Marilyn's conversion to Judaism

"Never answer a hypothetical question."

Moshe Arens
(12/27/1925 – 01/07/2019)
Lithuanian-Israeli politician

"If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English."

Wilfrid Sheed
(12/27/1930 – 01/19/2011)
US writer ("A Middle Class Education")

"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)

"One face to the world, another at home makes for misery."

Amy Vanderbilt
(07/22/1908 – 12/27/1974)
US etiquette maven ("Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette")

"If it were better, it wouldn't be as good."

Brendan Gill
(10/04/1914 – 12/27/1997)
US writer ("Here at The New Yorker")

"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 ("The Fixer")

"Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion."

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
(08/22/1934 – 12/27/2012)
US military

"Instant gratification takes too long."

Carrie Fisher
(10/21/1956 – 12/27/2016)
US actor (Star Wars), writer ("Postcards from the Edge")
(mother of Billie Lourd; daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher; was married to Paul Simon)