July 08

"Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire."

Jean de la Fontaine
(07/08/1621 – 04/13/1695)
French writer

"I cannot spare the luxury of believing that all things beautiful are what they seem."

Fitz-Greene Halleck
(07/08/1790 – 11/19/1867)
US writer

"Contemporary criticism only represents the amount of ignorance genius has to contend with."

Percy Bysshe Shelley
(08/04/1792 – 07/08/1822)
English writer (was married to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

"In politics, there is no use looking beyond the next fortnight."

Joseph Chamberlain
(07/08/1836 – 07/02/1914)
English politician (died near his birthday)

"Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it."

John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
(07/08/1839 – 05/23/1937)
US gazillionaire (father of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., grandfather of Nelson Rockefeller)

"No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes."

Kathe Kollwitz
(07/08/1867 – 04/22/1945)
German artist

"Architecture is the art of how to waste space."

Philip Johnson
(07/08/1906 – 01/25/2005)
US architect

"I didn't say that I didn't say it, I said that I didn't say that I said it. I want to make that very clear."

George Romney
(07/08/1907 – 07/26/1995)
US governor (MI) (father of Mitt Romney)

"The chief problem with lower income farmers is poverty."

Nelson Rockefeller
(07/08/1908 – 01/26/1979)
US zillionaire, Governor (NY), Vice President (41) (see other US Vice Presidents; grandson of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.; son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.)

"With my little band, I did everything they did with a big band. I made the blues jump."

Louis Jordan
(07/08/1908 – 02/04/1975)
US bandleader, rock'n'roller

"He had delusions of adequacy."

Walter Kerr
(07/08/1913 – 10/09/1996)
US theatre critic , on an unknown actor

"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within."

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
(07/08/1926 – 08/24/2004)
Swiss psychiatrist

"Economy is going without something you do want in case you should, some day, want something you probably don't want."

Sir Anthony Hope-Hawkins
(02/09/1863 – 07/08/1933)
English writer

"The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer."

Havelock Ellis
(02/02/1859 – 07/08/1939)
English writer

"Half the world does not know the joys of wearing cotton underwear."

Senator Phil Gramm
(07/08/1942 – )
US Senator

"Of course drugs were fun. And that's what's so stupid about anti-drug campaigns—they don't admit that."

Anjelica Huston
(07/08/1951 – )
US actor (daughter of John Huston, granddaughter of Walter Huston)

"Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Kuwait."

A. Whitney Brown
(07/08/1952 – )
US writer, humorist (SNL)

"I would even go to Washington, which is saying something for me, just to glimpse Jane Q. Public, being sworn in as the first female president of the United States, while her husband holds the Bible and wears a silly pill box hat and matching coat."

Anna Quindlen
(07/08/1953 – )
US writer

"There are two types of actors: those who say they want to be famous and those who are liars."

Kevin Bacon
(07/08/1958 – )
US actor (married to Kyra Sedgwick)

"I was the worst actor I ever came across."

Michael Wilding
(07/23/1912 – 07/08/1979)
English actor, director (was married to Elizabeth Taylor)

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover
(01/27/1900 – 07/08/1986)
Poland-born military guy

"MGM was my mother and father, mentor and guide, my all-powerful and benevolent crutch. When I left them, it was like walking into space."

June Allyson
(10/17/1917 – 07/08/2006)
US actor (was married to Dick Powell)