Barbara Chase-Riboud > Quotes

“too much love like too much rain begets large and bloody pools of discontent. I see my winter marked in your eyes. Whoever told you I was perfection?'-exerpt from Valide”
― Barbara Chase-Riboud

“No frontier for an American is uncrossable, including the so-called color line, and no person in the United States is an alien because of his color.”
― Barbara Chase-Riboud, The President's Daughter

“An informed public depends upon literacy and language: its good use, conception, comprehension and incorruptibility.”
― Barbara Chase-Riboud, I Always Knew: A Memoir

“A literate society depends on three things: culture, communication, and choice. One could add that culture is also faith and morality, that communication is also social interaction and equality, and that choice is both individualism and political action.”
― Barbara Chase-Riboud, I Always Knew: A Memoir

“Let the South,” I said slowly, “spend every single penny of their treasure, which colored people have earned for them. Let them spill a drop of their own blood for every drop of colored people’s blood they’ve spilled or contaminated. I have no pity and contemplate no mercy for the so-called bleeding Confederacy.”
― Barbara Chase-Riboud, The President's Daughter

“It seems that politics is becoming a millionaire's club...a poor man just doesn't have a chance these days. It is true that America is becoming more and more anti-revolutionary and anti-democratic--but as long as Americans feel such awe and envy for wealth and power, men like Scranton have a tremendous glamour over any other person no matter how well qualified or intelligent. [1962]”
― Barbara Chase-Riboud, I Always Knew: A Memoir

“By the March on Washington, we Negroes have shown a remarkable unity. And the opposition can certainly see their strength and determination. This scares and frustrates them because they see also their ultimate defeat. When people see defeat coming it makes them mad, frustrated and desperate. The result is nastiness, violence and brutality to the last degree. Now, everyone is so aware of the problem, there is no escaping it anywhere. People resent this. They resent having to think about something that never concerned them before, which really concerned only us. [1963]”
― Barbara Chase-Riboud, I Always Knew: A Memoir

“For Americans, the idea of living in another country has not only exotic, but let us be frank, vaguely unpatriotic connotations. But having to explain what is after all one's own self over and over again makes the American abroad more ferociously patriotic than he would ever dare to be at home.”
― Barbara Chase-Riboud, I Always Knew: A Memoir