I first interviewed Fidel Castro 39 years ago. He was charming and fiercely guarded about his private life. He called our interviews ‘fiery debates.’ During our times together, he made clear to me that he was an absolute dictator and that he was a staunch opponent of democracy.
BARBARA WALTERSLife 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.
More Barbara Walters Quotes
-
-
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.’
BARBARA WALTERS -
A good laugh makes any interview, or any conversation, so much better.
BARBARA WALTERS -
I can get a better grasp of what is going on in the world from one good Washington dinner party than from all the background information NBC piles on my desk.
BARBARA WALTERS -
If you were a tree, what kind would you be?
BARBARA WALTERS -
Celebrities used to be found in clusters, like oysters – and with much the same defensive mechanisms.
BARBARA WALTERS -
If it’s a woman, it’s caustic; if it’s a man, it’s authoritative.
BARBARA WALTERS -
The origin of a modern party is anthropological: humans meet and share food to lower hostility between them and indicate friendship.
BARBARA WALTERS -
A man cannot be comfortable [or cannot be made comfortable] without his own approval.
BARBARA WALTERS -
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.
BARBARA WALTERS -
For Castro, freedom starts with education. And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth.
BARBARA WALTERS -
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.
BARBARA WALTERS -
[On being indecisive and changeable:] On my gravestone I want inscribed: ‘On the other hand, maybe I should have lived.
BARBARA WALTERS -
I didn’t have a very religious family.
BARBARA WALTERS -
The origin of a modern party is anthropological: humans meet and share food to lower hostility between them and indicate friendship.
BARBARA WALTERS -
Most old people … are disheartened to be living in the ailing house of their bodies, to be limited physically and economically, to feel an encumbrance to others – guests who didn’t have the good manners to leave when the party was over.
BARBARA WALTERS