Pope Francis

(born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 17 December 1936) is the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church, a title he holds ex officio as Bishop of Rome, and Sovereign of the Vatican City.

Harvey Mackay

(born 1932) is a businessman, author and syndicated columnist with Universal Uclick. His weekly column gives career and inspirational advice and is featured in over 100 newspapers. Mackay has authored seven New York Times bestselling books, including three number one bestsellers. He is also a member of the National Speakers Association Council of Peers Award for Excellence Hall of Fame.

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton

(born October 26, 1947) is an American politician who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013. The wife of Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, she was First Lady of the United States during his tenure from 1993 to 2001. She served as a United States Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009

Leslie Calvin “Les” Brown

(born February 17, 1945) is a motivational speaker, author, radio DJ, former television host, and former politician. As a politician, he is a former member of the Ohio House of Representatives. As a motivational speaker, he uses the catch phrase “it’s possible!” and teaches people to follow their dreams as he learned to do.

Deepak Chopra

 (October 22, 1946) is an Indian-born, American physician, public speaker, and writer. He is generally specialized in subjects such as spirituality, Ayurveda and mind-body medicine.

Edward St. John Gorey

(February 22, 1925 – April 15, 2000) was an American writer and artist noted for his illustrated books. His characteristic pen-and-ink drawings often depict vaguely unsettling narrative scenes in Victorian and Edwardian settings.

Cory Anthony Booker

(born April 27, 1969) is an American politician and the junior United States Senator from New Jersey, in office since 2013. Previously he served as Mayor of Newark from 2006 to 2013

Ferenc Gyurcsány

(born 4 June 1961) is a Hungarian politician. He was the sixth Prime Minister of Hungary from 2004 to 2009.

Ernest Miller Hemingway

 (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) American writer and journalist. His distinctive writing style, characterized by economy and understatement, influenced 20th-century fiction, as did his life of adventure and public image. He produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and his career peaked in 1954 when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Alice Malsenior Walker

(born February 9, 1944) is an American author and activist. She wrote the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple (1982) for which she won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Jack Kerouac

( born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation

Albert Einstein

(14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and the most influential physicist of the 20th century.

Sarah Jane Vowell

(born December 27, 1969) is an American author, journalist, essayist, social commentator and actress. Often referred to as a “social observer,” Vowell has written seven nonfiction books on American history and culture.

Jonathan Balcombe

(born 28 February 1959) is an ethologist and author. He currently serves as Department Chair for Animal Studies with Humane Society University, in Washington, DC. He lectures internationally on animal behavior and the human-animal relationship.

Henry David Thoreau

 (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state

James Jones

(November 6, 1921 – May 9, 1977) was an American author known for his explorations of World War II and its aftermath. He won the 1952 National Book Award for his first published novel, From Here to Eternity, which was adapted for the big screen immediately and made into a television series a generation later

William Arthur Ward

 (1921–March 30, 1994), author of Fountains of Faith, is one of America’s most quoted writers of inspirational maxims. More than 100 articles, poems and meditations written by Ward have been published in such magazines as Reader’s Digest, This Week, The Upper Room

John Wood Campbell, Jr

. (June 8, 1910 – July 11, 1971) was an American science fiction writer and editor. As editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later called Analog Science Fiction and Fact) from late 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with shaping the Golden Age of Science Fiction.