Clare Boothe Luce
Ann Clare Boothe Luce was an American author, politician, U.S. Ambassador (Brazil and Italy) and public conservative figure. She was the first American woman appointed to a major ambassadorial post abroad. She served as a United States congresswoman from the 4th district in Connecticut from 1943 - 1947.
A versatile author, she is best known for her 1936 hit play The Women, which had an all-female cast.
Her writings extended from drama and screen scenarios to fiction, journalism and war reportage. She was the wife of Henry Luce, publisher of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated.
Politically, Luce was a leading conservative in later life and was well known for her anti-communism. In her youth, she briefly aligned herself with the liberalism of President Franklin Roosevelt as a protégé of Bernard Baruch, but later became an outspoken critic of Roosevelt. Although she was a strong supporter of the Anglo-American alliance in World War II, she remained outspokenly critical of British colonialism in India.
Known as a charismatic and forceful public speaker, especially after her conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1946, she campaigned for every Republican presidential candidate from Wendell Willkie to Ronald Reagan.
Luce passed away from brain cancer on October 9, 1987 at the age of eighty-four.
“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.”
“Courage is the ladder on which all other virtues mount.”
“A man has only one escape from his old self — to see a different self in the mirror of some woman's eyes.”
“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." -”
“Nature abhors a virgin - a frozen asset.”
“Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, lessens the friction of social contacts. It is only in lies, wholeheartedly and bravely told, that human nature attains through words and speech the forbearance, the nobility, the romance, the idealism, that -- being what it is -- it falls so short of in fact and in deed.”
“But if God had wanted us to think with just our wombs, why did He give us a brain?”
“There are no hopeless situations;there are only people who have grown hopeless about then.”
“Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable.”
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”