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William Orville Douglas (1898 – 1980) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States for 36 years from 1939 to 1975. Douglas was known for his strong progressive and civil libertarian views and as a strong defender of the First Amendment. Born in Maine, Minnesota, Douglas moved west with his family to California and then to Yakima, Washington after the death of his father. He chaired  the Securities and Exchange Commission before being appointed to the Supreme Court by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He is the longest-serving justice in history to date.

Quote Source: Douglas delivered this message in a talk to the Authors Guild Council in New York on December 3, 1951. He received the 1951 Lauterbach Award for his defense of civil liberties at the event, according to the American Library Association. 

Mark Twain - Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name, Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, publisher, and lecturer.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German polymath and writer. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language. His work as a poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theater director and critic has had a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day. He is known for works like "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and "Faust". More

Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, religious philosopher writer and a child prodigy. His earliest mathematical work at age 16 was on projective geometry. Later, he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of conic sections and he laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities and formulated what came to be known as Pascal’s principle of pressure. He also made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of vacuum. Pascal died in Paris at the age of 39. More 

Samuel Barclay Beckett (1906 – 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, literary translator and poet. Beckett was a resident of Paris for most of his adult life and he wrote in both French and English. Beckett was a member of the French Resistance group Gloria SMH during WWII and he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. In 1961 he shared the inaugural Prix International with Jorge Luis Borges. In 1969 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Mary Ann Evans (1819 - 1880) Also known by her pen name George Eliot, was one of the leading English writers of the Victorian era .
Source: George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“There are three ways of arriving at an opinion on any subject. The first is to believe what one is told; the second is to disbelieve it; and the third is to examine the matter for oneself. The overwhelming majority of mankind practice the first method; of the remainder, the overwhelming majority practice the second; only an infinitesimal remnant practice the third.”

Source:  Bertrand Russell, Mortals and Others, Bertrand Russell’s American Essays 1931–1935, Vol. II, Essay. 37: What to Believe, p. 454 (24 August 1931)

Jacque Fresco (1916 – 2017) was an American futurist and self-described social engineer. He left home at the age of 14 and was Self-taught, He worked in a variety of positions related to industrial design. Fresco wrote and lectured his views on sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural-resource management, cybernetic technology, automation, and the role of science in society. He was the founder of the Venus Project a still active non-profit organization that advocates for a resource-based economy and redesigns civilization.

Image source: Maj Borg, Minttu Mäntynen, Andrea Miconi, CC BY 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) was a German philosopher often called the “philosopher of pessimism". He is known for his 1818 work "The World as Will and Representation" (expanded in 1844), Schopenhauer was among the first philosophers in the Western tradition to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance. His writings influenced later existential philosophy and Freudian psychology.

Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American writer, poet, singer, and civil rights activist

Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, religious philosopher writer and a child prodigy. His earliest mathematical work at age 16 was on projective geometry. Later, he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of conic sections and he laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities and formulated what came to be known as Pascal’s principle of pressure. He also made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of vacuum. Pascal died in Paris at the age of 39. More 

Source: "The Lettres provinciales" (“Provincial letters”) of 1656–7

Albert Einstein (1879 – April 1955) - German-born theoretical physicist best known for developing the theory of relativity and his important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, "for his services to Theoretical Physics and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" More