Barbara Walters Quotes

Small children do not belong at an adult party, and especially should not be used like trained midgets to help serve martinis.

To feel valued, to know, even if only once in a while, that you can do a job well is an absolutely marvelous feeling.

The hardest thing you will ever do is trust yourself.

But for Muslims, everything that they don't have on earth is what they get in heaven. They can drink, they can have sex. All of the forbidden pleasures on earth, you can have in paradise.

First of all, the Jewish religion has a great deal in common with the Christian religion because, as Rabbi Gillman points out in the show, Christianity is based on Judaism. Christ was Jewish.

People sinking into self-pity and depression are dreary, but they can't get out of it by themselves. So every now and then, just sit there and listen, and listen, and listen. You're paying your membership dues in the human race.

The aging process seems to strike first at the mechanism which warns that we have been talking too much and the listener is growing restless. The signal isn't perfect at any age - drink, for instance, throws it right out of kilter - but it is almost non-existent in old people.

When you're interviewing someone, you're in control. When you're being interviewed, you think you're in control, but you're not.

Children are God's way of punishing us for having sex.

when your child is in trouble, the first thing you do is blame yourself.

The origin of a modern party is anthropological: humans meet and share food to lower hostility between them and indicate friendship.

If you were a tree, what kind would you be?

I didn't have a very religious family.

Being a parent is tough. If you just want a wonderful little creature to love, you can get a puppy

Most attractive males talk to most attractive women as if they were Rotarians comparing sales percentages in Des Moines.

For Castro, freedom starts with education. And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth.

I think most working relationships could benefit by excluding personal matters from the office chatter.

A good laugh makes any interview, or any conversation, so much better.

A Hot Fudge Sundae and a trashy novel is my idea of heaven.

New York is a galaxy of adventure at once elegant, exciting and bizarre. It's a city that moves so fast, it takes energy just to stand still.

The word 'charismatic' was made for Fidel Castro. You would have liked him, I would have liked him. Then you had to stop and say, 'Just a minute. This is a man who does not believe in freedom of the press...does not believe in democracy as we know democracy, had political prisoners.'

Celebrities used to be found in clusters, like oysters - and with much the same defensive mechanisms.

Before we had airplanes and astronauts, we really thought that there was an actual place beyond the clouds, somewhere over the rainbow. There was an actual place, and we could go above the clouds and find it.there.

If it's a woman it's caustic, if it's a man it's authority, If it's a woman it's too pushy, if it's a man it's aggressive in the best sense of the word.

To not sing with an orchestra, to not be able to communicate through my voice, which I've done all my life, and not to be able to phrase lyrics and give people that kind of joy, I think I would be totally devastated.

This is what I tell, especially young women, fight the big fights. Don't fight the little fight... Be the first one in, be the last one out. Do your homework, choose your battles. Don't whine, and don't be the one who complains about everything. Fight the big fight.

I was the kind nobody thought could make it. I had a funny Boston accent. I couldn't pronounce my R's. I wasn't a beauty.

Just do your job. Get in early. Stay late, and don’t complain. Fight the big fights.

To excel is to reach your own highest dream. But you must also help others, where and when you can, to reach theirs. Personal gain is empty if you do not feel you have positively touched another's life.

Don't worry about finding your bliss right now. Not even our President knew what his bliss was, nor did I. One of these days to your own surprise, your bliss will find you. But no matter what you do, participate, be there, full force, full heart, full steam ahead.

The way you dress is the billboard that tells perceptive people how you feel about yourself.

Large cocktail parties are an infamous technique for ridding yourself of social obligations to people you usually don't know well or like much, which is such an unpromising beginning that I've rarely known one that recovered and turned into a great party.

Every genius I have met could be classified as crazy by most people. They possess the highest level of sanity that us people find difficult to understand and accept.

Deep breaths are very helpful at shallow parties.

Homogeneity is much to be admired - in milk, for instance - but not for parties.

[On being indecisive and changeable:] On my gravestone I want inscribed: 'On the other hand, maybe I should have lived.

Life sometimes brings enormous difficulties and challenges that seem just too hard to bear. But bear them you can, and bear them you will, and your life can have a purpose.

All of the religions - with the exception of Tibetan Buddhism, which doesn't believe in a heaven - teach that heaven is a better place. At the end of the program, I say that heaven is a place where you are happy. All of the religions have that in common.

[President Obama] made so many promises. We thought that he was going to be -- I shouldn't say this at Christmastime -- but the next messiah.

It's a fact that it is much more comfortable to be in the position of the person who has been offended than to be the unfortunate cause of it.

Don't let the bastards get you down.

I also found that for myself, since I've had no religious education, it was so interesting to see the different versions of heaven and what life on earth means.

If it's a woman, it's caustic; if it's a man, it's authoritative.

politics ... is the hottest, most dangerous subject in the land. It's not only a conversation-wrecker, it's a friendship-wrecker, a family-wrecker, a job-wrecker, a future-wrecker.

Parents of young children should realize that few people, and maybe no one, will find their children as enchanting as they do.

Show me someone who never gossips, and I'll show you someone who isn't interested in people.

I don't know about you, but I can never get enough David Letterman.

Don't confuse being stimulating with being blunt.