“Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.”

Cherokee-American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorist

Will Rogers was a Cherokee-American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorist. Born in the Cherokee Nation in what was then the Indian Territory, he became known as “Oklahoma’s Favorite Son” and was a major American entertainer in the early twentieth century. He traveled around the world three times, made 71 films, and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns. By the mid-1930s, he was widely admired in the United States for his political wit and counted among Hollywood’s better-paid film stars. He died in 1935 when a small airplane carrying him and aviator Wiley Post crashed on takeoff near Barrow, Alaska.