Born this week
Sunday October 11th, 2026
Friedrich Nietzsche
October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philologist, philosopher, cultural critic, poet and composer. He wrote several critical texts on ...
Oscar Wilde
October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of ...
Dwight D. Eisenhower
October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969
Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United ...
Eleanor Roosevelt
October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962
Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American politician, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, ...
William Penn
October 14, 1644 – July 30, 1718
For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
William Penn was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English ...
e. e. cummings
October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
Edward Estlin Cummings, known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e e ...
Hannah Arendt
October 14, 1906 – December 4, 1975
To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious.
Johanna "Hannah" Arendt was a German-born political theorist. Though often described as a philosopher, she rejected that label on the ...
W. Edwards Deming
October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993
It is not enough to do your best you must know what to do, and then do your best.
William Edwards Deming was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially ...
Lillie Langtry
October 13, 1853 – February 12, 1929
I am a grandmother now, and that means age is creeping on, creeping on.
Lillie Langtry, usually spelled Lily Langtry in the United States, born Emilie Charlotte Le Breton, was celebrated as a young woman of ...
Eugenio Montale
October 12, 1896 – September 12, 1981
However, poetry does not live solely in books or in school anthologies.
Eugenio Montale was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, and recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely ...
William Temple
October 15, 1881 – October 26, 1944
You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with you, by using them ill.
William Temple was a bishop in the Church of England. He served as Bishop of Manchester, Archbishop of York and Archbishop of Canterbury. ...
William O. Douglas
October 16, 1898 – January 19, 1980
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.
William Orville Douglas served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Nominated by President Franklin D. ...
Georg Buchner
October 17, 1813 – February 19, 1837
I'll know how to die with courage that is easier than living.
Karl Georg Büchner was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose. He was also a revolutionary, a natural scientist, and the ...
Lenny Bruce
October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966
When you're eight years old nothing is your business.
Leonard Alfred Schneider, better known by his stage name Lenny Bruce, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic and satirist. He ...
Aleister Crowley
October 12, 1875 – December 1947
I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.
Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley was a British occultist, writer and mystic. He is perhaps best known today for his occult ...
Shinichi Suzuki
October 17, 1898 – January 26, 1998
What is man's ultimate direction in life? It is to look for love, truth, virtue, and beauty.
Shinichi Suzuki was the inventor of the international Suzuki method of music education and developed a philosophy for educating people of ...
Katherine Mansfield
October 14, 1888 – January 9, 1923
Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.
Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand ...
P. G. Wodehouse
October 15, 1881 – February 14, 1975
Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, humorous verses, ...
Mario Puzo
October 15, 1920 – July 2, 1999
Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.
Mario Gianluigi Puzo was an Italian American author and screenwriter, known for his novels about the Mafia, including The Godfather, which ...
Robert Fitzgerald
October 12, 1910 – January 16, 1985
Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.
Robert Stuart Fitzgerald was an American poet, critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a ...
Paul Engle
October 12, 1908 – March 22, 1991
Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.
Paul Engle, noted American poet, editor, teacher, literary critic, novelist, and playwright. He is perhaps best remembered as the long-time ...
Lillian Gish
October 14, 1893 – February 27, 1993
A happy life is one spent in learning, earning, and yearning.
Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress, director and writer whose film acting career spanned 75 years, ...
Michel Foucault
October 15, 1926 – June 25, 1984
Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, philologist and literary critic. His theories addressed the ...
Moshe Sharett
October 15, 1894 – July 7, 1965
Arabs respect only the language of force.
Moshe Sharett was the second Prime Minister of Israel, serving for a little under two years between David Ben-Gurion's two terms.
David Ben-Gurion
October 16, 1886 – December 1973
Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.
David Ben-Gurion was the primary founder and the first Prime Minister of Israel. Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in ...
Michael Collins
October 16, 1890 – August 22, 1922
I knew I was alone in a way that no earthling has ever been before.
Michael Collins was an Irish revolutionary leader, Minister for Finance, Director of Information, and Teachta Dála for Cork South in the ...
Jupiter Hammon
October 17, 1711 – 1806
The Bible is a revelation of the mind and will of God to men. Therein we may learn, what God is.
Jupiter Hammon was a black poet who in 1761 became the first African-American writer to be published in the present-day United States. ...