Philosophers, poets, playwrights and other putzes

October 18, 1785 -- English poet and novelist Thomas Love Peacock was born. He wrote:

"Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent."



October 17, 1938 -- Daredevil Evel Knievel was born in 1938.

"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." -- H. L. Mencken.



October 16, 1888 -- Playwright Eugene O'Neill was born. He wrote:

"I sometimes think that the United States...is the greatest failure the world has ever seen."




October 15, 1844 -- Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was born.

"(He was) an agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur." -- Leo Tolstoy.

We'll certainly never learn

German philosopher G. W. F. (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich) Hegel was born on this day in 1770.

"What experience and history teach is this," Hegel wrote, "--that people and governments never have learned anything from history."



Yesterday was Women's Equality Day!

"Woman may be said to be an inferior man." -- Aristotle.

Sorry, we forgot all about it. You know how us men are always slighting our women.

And we was quite sure about that

Writer, mathematician, philosopher and humanitarian Bertrand Russell was born on this day in 1872.

"I have always felt respectable people scoundrels," he wrote. And also:

"The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

You have to have some absolutes in life

Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard was born on this day in 1813.

"My life is absolutely meaningless." -- Soren Kierkegaard.