The United States is the only civilized country in the world to class its teachers at the bottom of the social scale.
GORE VIDALOn 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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Corporations must pay tax.
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In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.
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I’m always an optimist!
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In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.
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While campaigning, I got to know many high-school teachers, and let me say that the good ones are the unsung heroes of our society, and the bad ones are the gravediggers.
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The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.
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Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, ‘Well, so-and-so will like this,’ which you do when you’re younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.
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I am only at home in the present.
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In essence, Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism Act would set up a national police force, over the long-dead bodies of the founders.
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Jews, blacks and homosexuals are despised by the Christian and Communist majorities of East and West. Also, as a result of the invention of Israel, Jews can now count on the hatred of the Islamic world.
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To preserve the human race, it is now necessary to reorganize society. To this end, an Authority must be created with the power to control human population, to redistribute food, to purify air, water, soil, to re-pattern the cities.
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I can’t name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I’m told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don’t print them in ‘The New York Times.’
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The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.
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The human race is plainly nothing in eternity, but to us, in time, it is everything and ought not to die.
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Fifty percent of people won’t vote, and fifty percent don’t read newspapers. I hope it’s the same fifty percent.
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American history has fallen more and more into the hands of academics.
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I’ve yet to read a memoir by anyone I’ve known at all well that came anywhere near to the truth.
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I was the most famous kid in the United States. That was 1936.
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It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham. He was always so entirely there.
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Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
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One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.
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The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.
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That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.
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A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
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As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
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I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
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