Life & People: 1879

Showing posts with label 1879. Show all posts

Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Will Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was an American cowboy, vaudeville performer, humorist, social commentator and motion picture actor. He was one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s.

Known as Oklahoma's favorite son, Rogers was born to a prominent Cherokee Nation family in Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma). He traveled around the world three times, made 71 movies (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), wrote more than 4,000 nationally-syndicated newspaper columns, and became a world-famous figure. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was adored by the American people. He was the leading political wit of the Progressive Era, and was the top-paid Hollywood movie star at the time. Rogers died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post, when their small airplane crashed in Alaska.

His vaudeville rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion, and provided Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of other controversial topics in a way that was readily appreciated by a national audience, with no one offended. His aphorisms, couched in humorous terms, were widely quoted: "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."

Rogers even provided an epigram on his most famous epigram:
When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read: "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I dident like." I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved.

Quotes·Quotations by Will Rogers

Art

¶ See what will happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails? [to his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo]

Education

¶ Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

Life

¶ Do the best you can, and don't take life too serious.

¶ You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is.

Star

¶ I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago.

Worry

¶ Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Rogers

Images

Wikimedia Commons

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and he spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955.

Some of his best-known poems include "Valley Candle", "Anecdote of the Jar", "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock", "The Emperor of Ice-Cream", "The Idea of Order at Key West", "Sunday Morning", "The Snow Man", and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

Quotes·Quotations by Wallace Stevens

Summer

¶ The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stevens

Samuel Goldwyn (1879-1974)

Samuel Goldwyn (1879-1974)

Samuel Goldwyn (c. July 1879 – January 31, 1974) was an American film producer. He was most notably well known for being the founding contributor and executive of several motion picture studios in Hollywood.

Quotes·Quotations by Samuel Goldwyn

Writing·Reading

¶ I read part of it all the way through.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Goldwyn

E.M. Foster (1879-1970)

E.M. Foster (1879-1970)

Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect."

Quotes·Quotation

Politics·Government

¶ Two cheers for democracy: one because it admit variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: There is no occasion to give three.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._M._Forster

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Albert Einstein ( /ˈælbərt ˈaɪnstaɪn/; German: [ˈalbɐt ˈaɪnʃtaɪn] ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". The latter was pivotal in establishing quantum theory within physics.[1]

Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe as a whole.

He was visiting the United States when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, and did not go back to Germany, where he had been a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He settled in the U.S., becoming a citizen in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he helped alert President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon, and recommended that the U.S. begin similar research; this eventually led to what would become the Manhattan Project. Einstein was in support of defending the Allied forces, but largely denounced using the new discovery of nuclear fission as a weapon. Later, together with Bertrand Russell, Einstein signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, which highlighted the danger of nuclear weapons. Einstein was affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955.

Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works. His great intelligence and originality have made the word "Einstein" synonymous with genius.

Quotes·Quotation by Albert Einstein

Advice

¶ The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

Attitudes

¶ Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

Deity

¶ My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the Universe.

Finance·Money

¶ The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

Goal

@ Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted. If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects.

Inspiration

¶ In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Happiness

¶ If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.

Einstein encourages us to find happiness in pursuing meaningful goals rather than external validation or material possessions.

Life

¶ Let us not forget that knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. ... I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insects as well as for the stars, Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

Mystery

¶ The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Knowledge·Wisdom

¶ Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.

Relativity

¶ When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.

Religion·Faith

¶ Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Science

¶ My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the Universe.

Universe

¶ I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.