Born in 1911 – E. F. Schumacher, German economist and philosopher.

“The modern economist … is used to measuring the “standard of living” by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is “better off” than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.”

Also: Russian illustrator Ivan Bilibin

Born in 1945 – Wim Wenders, German director, producer, and screenwriter.

Wenders on seeing:

“I think seeing happens partly through the eyes, but not entirely.”

“The more opinions you have, the less you see.”

Above: Still from Wenders’ 1977 film The American Friend

Previously: Wenders

Born in 1899 – Alfred Hitchcock, English-American film director.

Above: Hichcock (right) on the set of his 1954 film Rear Window with James Stewart and Grace Kelly.

Born in 1879 – Emiliano Zapata, General of the southern Mexican revolutionary army.

“La tierra es de quien la trabaja con sus manos.”
The land belongs to those who work it with their hands

Born in 1934 – Wendell Berry, American novelist, short story writer, poet, farmer, and essayist.

From the 1971 essay, “In Defense of Literacy”:
“We are dependent, for understanding, and for consolation and hope, upon what we learn of ourselves from songs and stories. This has always been so, and it will not change…The mastery of language and the knowledge of books is not an ornament, but a necessity. It is impractical only by the standards of quick profit and easy power. Longer perspective will show that it alone can preserve in us the possibility of an accurate judgment of ourselves, and the possibilities of correction and renewal. Without it, we are adrift in the present, in the wreckage of yesterday, in the nightmare of tomorrow.”

Previously: Berry, here and here.

Born in 1803 – Joseph Paxton, English gardener and architect, designer of The Crystal Palace.

Above: The Crystal Palace, about which Queen Victoria said upon its opening:

“This day is one of the greatest and most glorious of our lives… It is a day which makes my heart swell with thankfulness… before we neared the Crystal Palace, the sun shone and gleamed upon the gigantic edifice, upon which the flags of every nation were flying… The tremendous cheering, the joy expressed in every face, the vastness of the building, with all its decoration and exhibits, the sound of the organ… all this was indeed moving.”

Also born, in 1964: Lucky Dube