Born this week
Saturday July 5th, 2025
Jean Cocteau
July 5, 1889 – October 11, 1963
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel ...
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
June 29, 1900 – July 31, 1944
The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry was a French aristocrat, writer, poet, and ...
Calvin Coolidge
July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933
Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.
John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was the 30th President of the United States. A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ...
Edward Young
July 3, 1683 – April 5, 1765
By all means use some time to be alone.
Edward Young (June 1681 - 5 April 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for Night Thoughts. He was the son of Edward Young, later ...
Julius Caesar
July BCE – March 15, BCE
I love the name of honor, more than I fear death.
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general, statesman, Consul, and notable author of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the events that ...
Franz Kafka
July 3, 1883 – June 3, 1924
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
Franz Kafka was a German-language writer of novels and short stories, regarded by critics as one of the most influential authors of the ...
Hermann Hesse
July 2, 1877 – August 9, 1962
As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.
Hermann Hesse was a German born, Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass ...
George Sand
July 1804 – June 8, 1876
Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age.
Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, best known by her pseudonym George Sand, was a French novelist and memoirist. She is equally well known for ...
Stokely Carmichael
June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998
We had no more courage than Harriet Tubman or Marcus Garvey had in their times. We just had a more vulnerable enemy.
Stokely Carmichael, also known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian-American activist active in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and later, the ...
Nathaniel Hawthorne
July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864
Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and ...
Lionel Trilling
July 4, 1905 – November 5, 1975
Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.
Lionel Mordecai Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York ...
Frederic Bastiat
June 30, 1801 – December 24, 1850
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
Claude Frédéric Bastiat was a French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly. He was notable ...
John Gay
June 30, 1685 – December 4, 1732
The comfortable estate of widowhood is the only hope that keeps up a wife's spirits.
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera, a ballad opera. ...
Georges Duhamel
June 30, 1884 – April 13, 1966
I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.
Georges Duhamel, was a French author, born in Paris. Duhamel trained as a doctor, and during World War I was attached to the French Army. ...
David R. Brower
July 1912 – November 5, 2000
It seems that every time mankind is given a lot of energy, we go out and wreck something with it.
David Ross Brower was a prominent environmentalist and the founder of many environmental organizations, including the John Muir Institute ...
Medgar Evers
July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963
If we don't like what the Republicans do, we need to get in there and change it.
Medgar Wiley Evers was an African-American civil rights activist from Mississippi involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the ...
Robert Toombs
July 2, 1810 – December 15, 1885
Give us equality of enjoyment, equal right to expansion - it is as necessary to our prosperity as yours.
Robert Augustus Toombs was an American and Confederate political leader, Whig Party senator from Georgia, a founding father of the ...
John Mason Brown
July 3, 1900 – March 16, 1969
The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
John Mason Brown (July 3, 1900 - March 16, 1969) was an American drama critic and author. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he graduated from ...
W. H. Davies
July 3, 1871 – September 26, 1940
As long as I love Beauty I am young.
William Henry Davies or W. H. Davies was a Welsh poet and writer. Davies spent a significant part of his life as a tramp or hobo, in the ...
Ernst Fischer
July 3, 1899 – July 31, 1972
I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.
Ernst Fischer, also known under the pseudonyms: "Ernst Peter Fischer", "Peter Wieden", "Pierre Vidal", and "Der Miesmacher", was a ...
Thurgood Marshall
July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993
Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was ...
M. F. K. Fisher
July 3, 1908 – June 22, 1992
Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.
Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was a preeminent American food writer. She was also a founder of the Napa Valley Wine Library. She wrote some ...
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935
To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must do something.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a ...
George Borrow
July 5, 1803 – July 26, 1881
Next to the love of God, the love of country is the best preventive of crime.
George Henry Borrow was an English author who wrote novels and travelogues based on his experiences traveling around Europe. Over the ...