Clare Boothe Luce Quotes & Sayings

Women know what men have long forgotten. The ultimate economic and spiritual unit of any civilization is still the family. — Clare Boothe Luce

Rich women are not too put upon by their children. You don't have to do all the things for a child that those women who had to stay at home did. My Ann had a French governess who took care of her until she was twelve years old and went off to boarding school. — Clare Boothe Luce

The women who inspired this play deserved to be smacked across the head with a meat ax and that, I flatter myself, is exactly what I smacked them with. — Clare Boothe Luce

I refuse the compliment that I think like a man, thought has no sex, one either thinks or one does not. — Clare Boothe Luce

Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals - With no cure except as a guillotine might be called a cure for dandruff. — Clare Boothe Luce

Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount. — Clare Boothe Luce

There is nothing like a good dose of another woman to make a man appreciate his wife. — Clare Boothe Luce

I am for lifting everyone off the social bottom. In fact, I am for doing away with the social bottom altogether. — Clare Boothe Luce

They say that women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men. — Clare Boothe Luce

Women do generally manage to love the guys they marry more than they manage to marry the guys they love. — Clare Boothe Luce

I have never met a man [in the military], in or out of uniform, who ever said, "Let's use the missiles." They are even more terrified that the Bishops, because a great many of them don't expect to go to Heaven, which at least the Bishops do. — Clare Boothe Luce

A man's home may seem to be his castle on the outside; inside is more often his nursery. — Clare Boothe Luce

Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts. — Clare Boothe Luce

It is ridiculous to think that you can spend your entire life with just one person. Three is about the right number. Yes, I imagine three husbands would do it? — Clare Boothe Luce

All autobiographies are alibi-ographies. — Clare Boothe Luce

I know all about violence and physical abuse because my first husband used to beat me severely when he got drunk. Once, I can remember coming home from a party and walking up our vast marble staircase at the Fifth Avenue house while he was striking me. I thought, If I just gave him one shove down the staircase I would be rid of him forever. — Clare Boothe Luce

What generally passes for 'thought' among the majority of mankind is the time one takes out to rearrange one's prejudices. — Clare Boothe Luce

A man has only one escape from his old self - to see a different self in the mirror of some woman's eyes. — Clare Boothe Luce

Technological man can't believe in anything that can't be measured, taped, or put into a computer. — Clare Boothe Luce

You know, that's the only good thing about divorce; you get to sleep with your mother. — Clare Boothe Luce

Watergate is the great liberal illusion that you can have public virtue without private morality. — Clare Boothe Luce

A great man is one sentence. — Clare Boothe Luce

To put a woman on the ticket would challenge the loyalty of women everywhere to their sex, because it would be made to seem that the defeat of the ticket meant the defeat for a hundred years of women's chance to be truly equal with men in politics. — Clare Boothe Luce

I can't avoid writing. It's a sort of nervous tic I have developed since I gave up needlepoint. — Clare Boothe Luce

Women can't have an honest exchange in front of men without having it called a cat fight. — Clare Boothe Luce

Courage is the ladder on which all other virtues mount. — Clare Boothe Luce

Young men still desire women as much as ever, even though they don't want to marry them as much. — Clare Boothe Luce

Male supremacy has kept woman down. It has not knocked her out. — Clare Boothe Luce

My definition of the ideal man is 'that particular man with whom a woman happens to be in love at that particular time. — Clare Boothe Luce

If you ever manage to make a fool of me, I'll deserve what I get. — Clare Boothe Luce

Remember, whenever a Republican leaves one side of the aisle and goes to the other, it raises the intelligence quotient of both parties. — Clare Boothe Luce

Rome is the city above all cities which loses most of its meaning to those who do not bring to it some historical sense, a decent knowledge of art, and a good amount of time. Rome therefore is particularly disturbing to an American. — Clare Boothe Luce

Since the birth of our nation, the steady performance of the Marine Corps in fighting America's battles has made it the very symbol of military excellence. The Corps has come to be recognized worldwide as an elite force of fighting men, renowned for their physical endurance, for their high level of obedience, and for the fierce pride they take, as individuals, in the capacity for self discipline. — Clare Boothe Luce

If God had wanted us to think with our wombs, why did he give us a brain? — Clare Boothe Luce

If old age means a crown of thorns, the trick is to wear it jauntily. — Clare Boothe Luce

I was wondering today what the religion of the country is - and all I could come up with is sex. — Clare Boothe Luce

There are no hopeless situations;there are only people who have grown hopeless about then. — Clare Boothe Luce

Autobiography is mostly alibiography. — Clare Boothe Luce

You see few people here in America who really care very much about living a Christian life in a democratic world. — Clare Boothe Luce

Nature abhors a virgin - a frozen asset. — Clare Boothe Luce

Know what Freud wrote in his diary when he was 77? "What do women want? My God, what do they want?" Fifty years this giant brain spends analyzing women. And he still can't find out what they want. So this makes him the world's greatest expert on female psychology? — Clare Boothe Luce

I don't have a warm personal enemy left. They've all died off. I miss them terribly because they helped define me. — Clare Boothe Luce

There aren't many women now I'd like to see as President - but there are fewer men. — Clare Boothe Luce

When a man can't explain a woman's actions, the first thing he thinks of is the condition of her uterus. — Clare Boothe Luce

I don't have any warm personal enemies. All the SOBs have died. — Clare Boothe Luce

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn't have what it takes." ~ ' They will say, 'Women don't have what it takes." - — Clare Boothe Luce

Thoughts have no sex. — Clare Boothe Luce

If a woman's got any instincts, she feels when her husband's off the reservation. — Clare Boothe Luce

In politics women type the letters, lick the stamps, distribute the pamphlets and get out the vote. Men get elected. — Clare Boothe Luce

I wish I were a virgin again. The only fun I ever had was holding out. — Clare Boothe Luce

I hope I shall have ambition until the day I die. — Clare Boothe Luce

But if God had wanted us to think with just our wombs, why did He give us a brain? — Clare Boothe Luce

The oppressed never free themselves - they do not have the necessary strengths. — Clare Boothe Luce

H. L. Mencken told me once that he answered all his mail, pleasant and unpleasant, with just one line, 'You may be right.' That's the way I feel now. It is in the realm of possibility, just barely, that I could be the one who's wrong. — Clare Boothe Luce

The only time travelers are really gay is when they are traveling for no good reason at all. — Clare Boothe Luce

[In politics] no good deed goes unpunished — Clare Boothe Luce

Nature abhors a vacuum, even in the heads of statesmen. — Clare Boothe Luce

If men had to bear babies, there'd never be more than one child in a family. — Clare Boothe Luce

[On the Democratic Party:] Its leaders are always troubadors of trouble; crooners of catastrophe ... A Democratic President is doomed to proceed to his goals like a squid, squirting darkness all about him. — Clare Boothe Luce

Don't worry about your studies. When you want to do them well you will do them superbly. But for the moment the main thing is to get what little happiness there is in this wartorn world because "these are only good old days" now. — Clare Boothe Luce

The best defense against a powerful and positive dynamic ideology is neither verbal attack nor criticism, which are useful, but to set up an equally powerful and dynamic ideology against it. — Clare Boothe Luce

Time comes when every man's got to feel something new
when he's got to feel young again, just because he's growing old. Women are just the same. But when we get that way we change our hairdress. Or get a new cook. — Clare Boothe Luce

They [Democrats] are the troubadours and the crooners of catastrophe. — Clare Boothe Luce

No woman has ever so comforted the distressed or distressed the comfortable. on Eleanor Roosevelt. — Clare Boothe Luce

Bombs know no ism but barbarism. The laws that successfully govern a peaceful and democratic society do not interfere with the only law bombs know, which is the law of gravity. — Clare Boothe Luce

All history shows that the hand that cradles the rock has ruled the world, not the hand that rocks the cradle! — Clare Boothe Luce

A woman's best protection is a little money of her own. — Clare Boothe Luce

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there. — Clare Boothe Luce

Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable. — Clare Boothe Luce

In the final analysis there is no other solution to man's progress but the day's honest work, the day's honest decision, the day's generous utterances, and the day's good deed. — Clare Boothe Luce

The politicians were talking themselves red, white and blue in the face. — Clare Boothe Luce

A woman can produce what no man can: a child. — Clare Boothe Luce

The main thing is to get what little happiness there is out of life in this wartorn world because 'these are the good old days' now. — Clare Boothe Luce

You know, I have had a terrible life. I married two men I really didn't like. My only daughter was killed in a car accident. My brother committed suicide. Has my life been a life for anyone to envy? — Clare Boothe Luce

Middle age is the way you would feel about summer if you knew there would never be another spring. — Clare Boothe Luce

I don't think my position unusual for a woman. I'm following a perfectly natural urge to do what I like. — Clare Boothe Luce

Home is where you hang your architect. — Clare Boothe Luce

Greta Garbo: A deer in the body of a woman, living resentfully in the Hollywood zoo. — Clare Boothe Luce

It is matrimonial suicide to be jealous when you have a really good reason. — Clare Boothe Luce

Enemies may seek our destruction, but they also keep us on our toes and often help us figure out who we are and what we stand for. — Clare Boothe Luce

[On Vice-President Henry A. Wallace:] Much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still globaloney. — Clare Boothe Luce

Advertising has done more to cause the social unrest of the 20th century than any other single factor. — Clare Boothe Luce