Yesterday
Tomorrow
"Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim."
Lord Thomas Babington MacCaulay
(10/25/1800 – 12/28/1859)
English historian
"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'."
Sir Arthur Eddington
(12/28/1882 – 11/22/1944)
English physicist
"In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you."
Mortimer Adler
(12/28/1902 – 06/28/2001)
US educator, philosopher
"In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."
John von Neumann
(12/28/1903 – 02/08/1957)
Hungarian mathematician
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."
(12/28/1905 – 09/23/1974)
US comedian, actor, pianist, composer
, grandfather of Rosanna, Patricia, and David Arquette
"Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped."
Sam Levenson
(12/28/1911 – 08/27/1980)
US writer
"Hollywood must have been terrific once."
Peter Finch
(12/28/1916 – 01/14/1977)
English actor
"Success and failure are both greatly overrated. But failure gives you a whole lot more to talk about."
Hildegard Knef
(12/28/1925 – 02/01/2002)
German actor, singer
"Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs."
Guy deBord
(12/28/1931 – 11/30/1994)
French writer
"One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one's still acting."
Dame Maggie Smith
(12/28/1934 – )
English actor
"The real world is not easy to live in. It is rough; it is slippery. Without the most clear-eyed adjustments we fall and get crushed. A man must stay sober: not always, but most of the time."
Clarence Day
(11/18/1874 – 12/28/1935)
US writer
"Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave."
Theodore Dreiser
(08/27/1871 – 12/28/1945)
US writer
"Our pain isn't as bad as you might think. Dead people don't suffer."
Bill Lee
(12/28/1946 – )
US pitcher (Boston Red Sox)
, on losing six games against the Yankees late in the 1978 season
"Southward, two mighty ranges of the Appalachians shouldered their way into the blue distance like tremendous caravans marching across eternity."
Hervey Allen
(12/08/1889 – 12/28/1949)
US writer
"It's been like a bad dream I never woke from."
Alex Chilton
(12/28/1950 – )
US singer (Box Tops, Big Star)
, on fame
"A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, 'Oh, I don't like it.' One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin."
Denzel Washington
(12/28/1954 – )
US actor
"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."
A. J. Liebling
(10/18/1904 – 12/28/1963)
US writer
(was married to Jean Stafford)
"Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems."
Linus Torvalds
(12/28/1969 – )
US computer engineer
"The end of a picture is always an end of a life."
Sam Peckinpah
(02/21/1925 – 12/28/1984)
US director
Yesterday
Tomorrow
"Never murder a man who is committing suicide."
Woodrow Wilson
