Great Throughts Treasury

"Our whole way of life today is dedicated to the removal of risk. Cradle to grave we are supported, insulated, and isolated from the risks of life - and if we fall, our government stands ready with Band-Aids of every size."

"Any star can be devoured by human adoration, sparkle by sparkle."

"At the end of the Depression, people were perhaps looking for something to cheer themselves up. They fell in love with a dog and a little girl. It won't happen again."

"By the time I got to the Fox studio for my first major film, I knew how to hit a mark. I knew how to memorize lines. I knew how to pay attention."

"Animal crackers in my soup, monkeys and rabbits loop the loop. Gosh oh gee but I have fun swallowing animals one by one. In every bowl of soup I see Lions and Tigers watching me. I make 'em jump right through a hoop those animal crackers in my soup. When I get hold of the big bad wolf I just push him under to drown then I bite him in a million bits and I gobble him right down. When their inside me where it's dark I walk around like Noah's ark I stuff my tummy like a goop with animal crackers in my soup."

"By the time I was 4, I knew how to hit my mark."

"Don?t forget to tell your favorite people that you love them."

"Dr. Kissinger was a former child. Jerry Ford was a former child. Even F.D.R. was a former child. I retired from the movies in 1949, and I'm still a former child."

"Good luck needs no explanation."

"I class myself with Rin Tin Tin. People in the Depression wanted something to cheer them up, and they fell in love with a dog and a little girl."

"I don?t believe so. I know many 45-year-old men with the mentalities of six-year-olds, and my feeling is that they should not see such pictures, either. (When asked if the Suggested for Mature Audiences rating would protect youngsters.)"

"I guess I was an early method actress. I would go to a quiet part of the sound stage with my mother. I wouldn't think of anything sad, I would just make my mind a blank. In a minute I could cry."

"I had a very close family and I couldn't get away with anything."

"I have always told anyone who would listen that I was available for more public service."

"I have one piece of advice for those of you who want to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award: Start early!"

"I liked work shoes and big, working-class hands. The stars would come and go, but the crew on my movies was my extended family."

"I ran for Congress, just once."

"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph."

"I wanted to be in the FBI. I also wanted to be a pie salesman. It was so intense that the studio got the prop department to make a little pie wagon and they filled it with tarts. I wheeled it around the set and sold them to the crew. I was about eight years old. I always sold out and I didn't have to pay for them. It was a great deal."

"I was in Vienna in August 1968 for a meeting of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, of which I was co-founder, and we wanted a 20th country to join. They asked for a volunteer to go to Prague to get Czechoslovakia to do it, and my hand always goes up first."

"I work a seventeen hour day, and I?m personally responsible for 108 staff members in the embassy."

"I?m not too proud of the movies I made as a grownup except for The Hagen Girl, which nobody remembers but which gave me a chance to act."

"I'm quite optimistic. I'm also a realist. And I hope, you know, things work out. I don't think that the world will ever know peace. Complete peace in all countries. I think perhaps that's not in our makeup to do this although we can pray for it and work for it. But I think that the building blocks of peace are moving into shape, and I think that the world is going to be a better place."

"I've always been bossy."

"I've been so blessed. If someone asked me whom I would choose to be if I could come back in another life, I would have to say Shirley Temple Black. I cannot think of a more interesting life to ask for."

"I've led three lives: the acting part, wife and mother - which is a career - and international relations. I'm proud of my career, the first one, and I'm proud of the other two, too."

"Long ago, I became more interested in the real world than in make-believe."

"Make-believe colors the past with innocent distortion, and it swirls ahead of us in a thousand ways - in science, in politics, in every bold intention. It is part of our collective lives, entwining our past and our future ... a particularly rewarding aspect of life itself."

"Many people consider me an old friend."

"Most of the people in Ghana wouldn't know me as an actress. They'd know me for my work at the U.N."

"My mother made it seem perfectly normal for thousands of people to be cheering me, as if there was nothing special going on. I thought all children must live as I did."

"Nothing crushes freedom as substantially as a tank."

"One famous movie executive who shall remain nameless, exposed himself to me in his office. 'Mr X,' I said, 'I thought you were a producer not an exhibitor'."

"Politicians are actors, too, don't you think? Usually, if you like people and you're outgoing, not a shy little thing, you can do pretty well in politics."

"Shirley Temple doesn?t hurt Shirley Temple Black. Shirley Temple helps Shirley Temple Black. She is thought of as a friend -- which I am!"

"Some people liked Rudolph Valentino. I liked Rin Tin Tin."

"Studio chief Winfield Sheehan wanted me to remain a little girl. If I lost my innocence, he said, it would show in my eyes."

"Sunnybrook Farm is now a parking lot; the petticoats are in the garbage can, where they belong in the modern world; and I detest censorship."

"The U.N. acts as the world's conscience, and over eighty-five percent of the work that is done by the United Nations is in the social, economic, educational and cultural fields."

"There are many of us who should be in a position to bring peace to the world."

"There's nothing like real love. Nothing."

"Time is money. Wasted time means wasted money means trouble."

"We would have to invent the U.N. if we did not have it, which is not an original thought."

"When I was 14, I was the oldest I ever was. I?ve been getting younger ever since."

"When you're a performer, you have to please a large audience. And when you're in politics, you have to please a large audience, too."

"You've got to S-M-I-L-E. To be H-A-Double-P-Y."