December 29

"I feel incompetent to perform duties... which have been so unexpectedly thrown upon me."

Andrew Johnson
(12/29/1808 – 07/31/1875)
US President (17), VP (16)

"No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes."

William E. Gladstone
(12/29/1809 – 05/19/1898)
British PM (30)

"Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."

Edwin Hubbell Chapin
(12/29/1814 – 12/26/1880)
US clergyman (died near his birthday)

"To retire is to begin to die."

Pablo Casals
(12/29/1876 – 10/22/1973)
Spanish cellist

"Better by far that you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad."

Christina Rossetti
(12/05/1830 – 12/29/1894)
English poet (sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti)

"I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!" *

Paul McCracken
(12/29/1915 – 08/03/2012)
US economist

"The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals."

Sir William Osler
(07/12/1849 – 12/29/1919)
Canadian physician

"The only bad thing about Spokane is that there's nothing to do after 10 in the morning."

Jim Murray
(12/29/1919 – 08/16/1998)
US columnist

"Spring has returned. The earth is like a child that knows poems."

Rainer Maria Rilke
(12/04/1875 – 12/29/1926)
German writer

"Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers."

Mary Tyler Moore
(12/29/1936 – 01/25/2017)
US actor

"A hypocrite is a person who... but who isn't?"

Don Marquis
(07/29/1878 – 12/29/1937)
US writer, cartoonist

"I've been very fortunate—you only can do what you're offered, you know?"

Jon Voight
(12/29/1938 – )
US actor (father of Angelina Jolie)

"I love to play; a stage is a safe place for me to be. It's not that way for most folks, but I'd be lost without it."

Rick Danko
(12/29/1943 – 12/10/1999)
Canadian bassist (The Band)

"Maybe the most that you can expect from a relationship that goes bad is to come out of it with a few good songs."

Marianne Faithfull
(12/29/1946 – )
English singer (relationship with Mick Jagger)

"Acting is pretending that you're not pretending when you're actually pretending."

Ted Danson
(12/29/1947 – )
US actor (married to Mary Steenburgen; relationship with Whoopi Goldberg)

"I don't have a bank account, because I don't know my mother's maiden name."

Paula Poundstone
(12/29/1959 – )
US comic

"The people sensible enough to give good advice are usually sensible enough to give none."

Eden Phillpotts
(11/04/1862 – 12/29/1960)
English writer

"Jazz is the folk music of the machine age."

Paul Whiteman
(03/28/1890 – 12/29/1967)
US bandleader

"Half of this award should go to my wigs."

Jennifer Ehle
(12/29/1969 – )
US actor , on receiving a BAFTA award for "Pride and Prejudice"

"My only obligation is to keep myself and other people guessing."

Jude Law
(12/29/1972 – )
English actor

"I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance."

Harold Macmillan
(02/10/1894 – 12/29/1986)
British Prime Minister (44)

"The last time I was in Spain I got through six Jeffrey Archer novels. I must remember to take enough toilet paper next time."

Bob Monkhouse
(06/01/1928 – 12/29/2003)
English comic, writer

"Freedom is the handle on the bucket of your soul, the image of illusion in the goldfish of your bowl, the shampoo of perfection in the bathroom of your dreams, freedom is the universe and everything it seems, oh yes, we are the slaves of freedom."

Neil Innes
(12/09/1944 – 12/29/2019)
English actor, musician (Bonzo Dog Band, Rutles)