“All our dreams can come true,
if we have the courage to pursue them.”

~ Walt Disney

*Walter Elias “Walt” Disney

Born December 5, 1901 Hermosa, Chicago, Illinois
Died December 15, 1966 (aged 65) Burbank, California

An American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon and philanthropist. Disney is famous for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. As the co-founder (with his brother Roy O. Disney) of Walt Disney Productions, Disney became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation he co-founded, now known as The Walt Disney Company, today has annual revenues of approximately U.S. $35 billion.

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“Death is not the greatest loss in life.
The greatest loss is what dies inside us
while we live.”

~ Norman Cousins

*Norman Cousins

Born June 24, 1915 Union City, New Jersey
Died November 30, 1990 Los Angeles, California

An American political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate.

Politically, Cousins was a tireless advocate of liberal causes, such as nuclear disarmament and world peace, which he promoted through his writings in Saturday Review. In a 1984 forum at the University of California, Berkeley entitled “Quest for Peace,” Cousins recalled the long editorial he wrote on August 6, 1945, the day the United States dropped the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Titled “The Modern Man is Obsolete,” Cousins, who stated that he felt “the deepest guilt” over the bomb’s use on human beings, discussed in the editorial the social and political implications of the atomic bomb and nuclear power. He rushed to get it published the next day in the Review, and the response was considerable, as it was reprinted in newspapers around the country, and enlarged into a book that was reprinted in different languages.

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“Common sense is the knack
of seeing things as they are,
and doing things
as they ought to be done.”

~ Josh Billings

*Henry Wheeler Shaw

Born 20 April 1818 Lanesborough, Massachusetts
Died 14 October 1885 Monterey, California.

American humorist writing under the pen name of Josh Billings. He was perhaps the second most famous humor writer and lecturer in the United States in the second half of the 19th century after Mark Twain, although his reputation has not fared so well with later generations.

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“The actions of men
are the best interpreters of their thoughts”

~ John Locke

*John Locke

Born 29 August 1632 Wrington, Somerset, England
Died 28 October 1704 (aged 72) Essex, England

Widely known as the Father of Liberalism, an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory.

His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.

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“I don’t think of all the misery
but of the beauty that still remains.”

~ Anne Frank

*Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank

Born 12 June 1929 Frankfurt am Main, Weimar Germany
Died early March 1945 (aged 15) Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Lower Saxony, Nazi Germany

One of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world’s most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.

Born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. By nationality, she was officially considered a German until 1941, when she lost her nationality owing to the anti-Semitic policies of Nazi Germany. She gained international fame posthumously following the publication of her diary which documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

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“Faith and doubt both are needed
not as antagonists,
but working side by side
to take us around the unknown curve.”

~ Lillian Smith

*Lillian Eugenia Smith

Born December 12, 1897
Bied September 28, 1966

Writer and social critic of the Southern United States, known best for her best-selling novel Strange Fruit (1944). A white woman who openly embraced controversial positions on matters of race and gender equality, she was a southern liberal unafraid to criticize segregation and work toward the dismantling of Jim Crow laws, at a time when such actions almost guaranteed social ostracism.

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“There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind
than gratitude.
It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction
that the duty is sufficiently rewarded
by the performance.”

~ Joseph Addison

*Joseph Addison

Born May 1, 1672
Died June 17, 1719

An English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend, Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine.

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“It is not fair to ask of others
what you are not willing to do yourself.”

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

*Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

Born October 11, 1884 New York, New York
Died November 7, 1962 (aged 78) New York, New York

First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband’s death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an internationally prominent author, speaker, politician, and activist for the New Deal coalition. She worked to enhance the status of working women, although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women.

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“Men fear death
as children fear to go in the dark;
and as that natural fear in children
is increased with tales,
so is the other.”

~ Francis Bacon

*Francis Bacon

Born 22 January 1561 London, England
Died 9 April 1626 (aged 65) Highgate, England

English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific revolution.

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“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow.
It empties today of its strength.”

~ Corrie ten Boom

*Cornelia ten Boom

Born April 15, 1892, Amsterdam, Holland
Died April 15, 1983 on her 91st birthday Orange, California

A Dutch Christian Holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis during World War II. In 1970, ten Boom co-wrote her autobiography, The Hiding Place, released in 1971 and which was made into a film of the same name two years later starring Jeannette Clift as Corrie.

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“Our wretched species is so made that
those who walk on the well-trodden path
always throw stones at those
who are showing a new road.”

~ Voltaire

*François-Marie Arouet

Born 21 November 1694 Paris, France
Died 30 May 1778 (aged 83) Paris, France

Better known by the pen name Voltaire, a French Enlightenment writer and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and free trade. Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every literary form including plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day.

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“The indispensable first step
to getting the things you want out of this life is this:
decide what you want.”

~ Ben Stein

*Benjamin Jeremy Stein

Born November 25, 1944 Washington, D.C., United States

An American actor, writer, lawyer, and commentator on political and economic issues. He attained early success as a speechwriter for American presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Later he entered the entertainment field and became an actor, comedian, and Emmy Award-winning game show host.

Stein has frequently written commentaries on economic, political, and social issues, along with financial advice to individual investors. He is the son of noted economist and writer Herbert Stein, who worked at the White House under President Nixon. His sister, Rachel, is also a writer. While as a character actor he is well-known for his nerdy monotone, in real life he is a public speaker on a wide range of economic and social issues.

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“It is wonderful how much time good people
spend fighting the devil.
If they would only expend the same amount of energy
loving their fellow men,
the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”

~ Helen Keller

*Helen Adams Keller

Born June 27, 1880 Tuscumbia, Alabama, USA
Died June 1, 1968 (aged 87) Arcan Ridge, Easton, Connecticut, USA

An American author, political activist and lecturer. A prolific author, Keller was well traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war. A member of the Socialist Party USA and the Wobblies, she campaigned for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights and socialism, as well as many other leftist causes.

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“Happiest are the people
who give most happiness to others.”

~ Denis Diderot

*Denis Diderot

(1713-1784)
A French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best-known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie.

Diderot also contributed to literature, notably with Jacques le fataliste et son maître (Jacques the Fatalist and his Master), which emulated Laurence Sterne in challenging conventions regarding novels and their structure and content, while also examining philosophical ideas about free will. Diderot is also known as the author of the dialogue, Le Neveu de Rameau (Rameau’s Nephew), upon which many articles and sermons about consumer desire have been based. His articles included many topics of the Enlightenment.

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