the all-female To the Women, a take-no-prisoners satire of snooty society ladies, which went on to become a very successful movie. Clare became an international cause célèbre with the success of To the Women, penning a few more stage plays including Kiss the Boys Goodbye before she pulled another switcheroo: war correspondent for Life magazine on the battle fronts of Burma, India, and China during the early years of World War II. She even interviewed Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Prime Minister Nehru.
Clare’s next incarnation was as a politician, and she went on the stump, dissing FDR, Winston Churchill, and a herd of other such sacred cows. She stunned everyone with her gift for rhetoric of the biting, stinging sort. Her next move was to run for a seat as one of Connecticut’s representatives in Congress with a very hawkish platform—her slogan was “Let’s Fight a Hard War Instead of a Soft War”—and she campaigned for the rights of women, blacks, and workers. Easily winning a seat, she served for four years and then retired while she was ahead. Clare then took her domestic campaigns abroad, convincing the Italian Prime Minister to give Italian women the vote! Her good relations with Italy garnered a post for Clare as the ambassador to Italy in 1953, becoming the United States’ second woman ambassador and the first woman chief of mission to a major European power. In 1953, she was fourth in the Gallup poll of the most admired women in the world.
Clare became the grande dame of the Grand Old Party from the Goldwater sixties until her death of cancer in 1987. Clare will be best remembered for her quick wit and verbal virtuosity. She was absolutely one of a kind; she never luxuriated in her husband’s great wealth, but instead worked her behind off for many causes and left a legacy of great strides for women in her wake.
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, politician and first U.S. woman in a major post as ambassador
Luce Lips
From the diary Clare kept her psychedelic-inspired musings in when she and hubby Henry dropped acid in 1960: “Capture green bugs for future reference,” “Feel all true paths to glory lead but to the grave,” and “The futility of the search to be someone. Do you hear the drum?”
On Veep Henry Wallace, “His global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, globaloney!”
On Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Now, I do not for a moment believe that Mr. Roosevelt is a real dictator. Rather, he is a sort of super-duper, highly cultured political boss.”
On Harry Truman, “A gone goose.”
On Eleanor Roosevelt, “No woman in American history has ever so comforted the distressed or so distressed the comfortable.”
On Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo, “the high muckamuck in America of that muckiest and most vulgar of all modern pagan cults: racism!”
On the environment, “I am bewildered by the paradox presented by a nation that can land on the moon, orbit satellites 190 million miles from earth, but can’t find a way to rid its own landscape of broken-down automobiles.”
Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
—Ursula K. LeGuin, prize-winning speculative fiction author and poet
I have never met a person whose greatest need was anything other than real, unconditional love…. There is no mistaking love. You feel it in your heart. It is the common fiber of life, the flame that heats our soul, energizes our spirit, and supplies passion to our lives.
—Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, pioneering Swiss-American psychiatrist and writer
As you continue to send out love, the energy returns to you in a regenerating spiral…. As love accumulates, it keeps your system in balance and harmony. Love is the tool, and more love is the end product.
—Sara Paddison, writer on human potential
Where there is great love, there are always miracles.
—Willa Cather, award-winning author known for novels about frontier life
Loves conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
—Mae West, memorable actress, comedian, screenwriter, and sex symbol
Love is like pi—natural, irrational, and VERY important.
—Lisa Hoffman, entrepreneur and nerdy wit
Esteem Yourself!
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
—Sharon Salzberg, best-selling author and Buddhist teacher
Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.
—Marilyn Monroe, iconic actress and singer
The man who does not value himself cannot value anything or anyone.
—Ayn Rand, in The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
For once, you believed in yourself. You believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world.
—Sarah Dessen, author of Saint Anything
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