As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
GORE VIDALTV news is not very instructive.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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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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As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
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I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
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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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Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.
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American history has fallen more and more into the hands of academics.
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Actually, I can’t remember when I was not writing.
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The unfed mind devours itself.
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The United States is the only civilized country in the world to class its teachers at the bottom of the social scale.
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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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Never have children, only grandchildren.
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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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Love is not my bag.
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The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
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Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
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