"There have been many most excellent poets that have never versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets."

Sir Philip Sidney
(11/30/1554 – 10/17/1586)
English statesman

"Big fleas have little fleas
upon their backs to bite 'em;
and little fleas have lesser fleas,
and so ad infinitum."

Jonathan Swift
(11/30/1667 – 10/19/1745)
English writer, on the invention of the microscope

"His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere."

Mark Twain
(11/30/1835 – 04/21/1910)
US writer

"As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted."

Lucy Maud Montgomery
(11/30/1874 – 04/24/1942)
Canadian writer (Anne of the Green Gables)

"Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut."

Winston Churchill
(11/30/1874 – 01/24/1965)
British Prime Minister (41) (son of Jennie Jerome Churchill; see other British Prime Ministers)

"The piano is the social instrument par excellence. . . . drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of entertainment."

Jacques Barzun
(11/30/1907 – )
French educator

"He just sat there watching me, and then he walked right up and kissed me."

Virginia Mayo
(11/30/1920 – 01/17/2005)
US actor, on how she met her husband Michael O'Shea

"Tremendous amounts of talent are being lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt."

Shirley Chisholm
(11/30/1924 – 01/01/2005)
US Rep (NY)

"Even if Scrabble had been invented then, I wouldn't have wanted to play Scrabble, because the highest triple word score in the world would not have expressed how much I liked the game Natalie and I played every afternoon."

Allan Sherman
(11/30/1924 – 11/20/1973)
US comic

"I am sure I will feel at home in the Bahamas. I've been involved in gambling in the Bahamas. I've been involved in gambling in Nevada and I've been involved in banking."

Chic Hecht
(11/30/1928 – 05/15/2006)
US Ambassador (Bahamas), on his qualifications for the job

"Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?"

Dick Clark
(11/30/1929 – )
US ageless celebrity

"If I can go from burglar for the government to talk show host, you can go from entertainer to congressman."

G. Gordon Liddy
(11/30/1930 – )
US political fixture, to Sonny Bono

"Avoid all needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon."

Abbie Hoffman
(11/30/1936 – 04/12/1989)
US writer, 60s revolutionary, hadn't met George W. Bush

"Sex is boring unless you're doing it."

Sir Ridley Scott
(11/30/1937 – )
English director, on why his films don't have sex scenes

"(Broadway critics) Frank Rich and John Simon are the syphilis and gonorrhea of the theatre."

David Mamet
(11/30/1947 – )
US playwright

"I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted."

Lawrence Summers
(11/30/1954 – )
US economist, Harvard president, on exporting toxic waste to Third World countries

"The biggest misconception people have about me is that I'm stupid."

Billy Idol
(11/30/1955 – )
English singer (Generation X)

"There's an old saying in Hollywood: It's not the length of your film, it's how you use it."

Ben Stiller
(11/30/1965 – )
US actor

"I feel like I'm one of the Simpsons."

Elisha Cuthbert
(11/30/1982 – )
Canadian actor, on wearing the same clothing for an entire season for "24"