Top 9 Shirley Temple Quotes

Macho attitudes usually fall victim to hard work, timely humor, and an absence of resentment.

Politicians are actors too, don't you think?

I have no trouble being taken seriously as a woman and a diplomat here. My only problems have been with Americans who, in the beginning, refused to believe I had grown up since my movies.

President Roosevelt patted and squeezed me in 1938. Truman, Eisenhower, and Nixon shook my hand, but then I was older. Ford kissed me. Jimmy Carter kissed me in the White House, which means I was even older. And now I am simply female, black, and unemployed.

I never even aspired to be an actress. Even when I was very young, I had three aspirations: to be a surgeon, or an FBI agent, or a pie salesman.

Some of you may recollect a little girl with clean and curled hair, starched skirts, ruffles, and bows. That perception was wrong. The reality was a kid in blue jeans and sentimental sneakers, dirty hands, dirty face, usually climbing a tree.

I think we all learn from the past. I just feel we shouldn't live there. We shouldn't live in the past. I live for today, and to me, the most important moment is now.

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.

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.