Explore Quotes by Shirley Temple

I was absolutely bathed in love. I was so young, starting at age 3, that working seemed very normal. I thought everybody went to work.

When I saw work shoes, I would know that that person worked. I was very worried about people with shiny, pointed shoes as a child.

Biographies of me have usually been compiled from old newspaper clips, untruthful publicity stories, and reminiscences of people who claim to have known me well.

The idea of being with my peers at a real school seemed much more exciting than making movies.

Shirley Temple doesn't hurt Shirley Temple Black. Shirley Temple helps Shirley Temple Black. She is thought of as a friend - which I am!

I guess I was an early method actress. I would go to a quiet part of the sound stage with my mother. I wouldn't think of anything sad, I would just make my mind a blank. In a minute I could cry.

Most of the people in Ghana wouldn't know me as an actress. They'd know me for my work at the U.N.

Shirley Temple opens doors for Shirley Temple Black.

I have one piece of advice for those of you who want to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award: Start early!

I've been blessed with three wonderful careers: motion pictures and television, wife, mother and grandmother... and diplomatic services for the United States government.

I wish my name was Cobb. Then they would send over a Cobb salad.

Make-believe colors the past with innocent distortion, and it swirls ahead of us in a thousand ways in science, in politics, in every bold intention.

Long ago, I became more interested in the real world than in make-believe.

Men say, 'I've loved you since I was 7 years old,' and I say, 'Well, you never contacted me.' And very often women say, 'Do youuuuuu know what I have?' and I want to say, 'Yessssssss, I do.' Because inevitably the answer is, 'An original Shirley Temple doll.'

I've led three lives: the acting part, wife and mother - which is a career - and international relations. I'm proud of my career, the first one, and I'm proud of the other two, too.

I wanted to be the first girl in my class to get married. From the seventh grade on, I used to write in my yearbook under each senior's picture, 'married' or 'engaged.' I had marriage on the brain.

I remember telling President Carter on his first night, when I was escorting people around, that I was interested in continuing public service and that politics didn't matter - but it does, doesn't it?

When I asked my mother why crowds shouted my name and said 'We love you,' she would dust it off by saying, 'Your work makes them happy.' She never let it go to my head.

My role models were Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt, and my major crush was J. Edgar Hoover.

At the end of the Depression, people were perhaps looking for something to cheer themselves up. They fell in love with a dog and a little girl. It won't happen again.

I did an imitation of him to make the crew laugh. To my shock, there was Cary Grant behind me. He got very angry. I was sent all the way from RKO to David Selznick's office and was told not to do it anymore. I thought to myself, 'I must have been pretty good to make him that angry.'