My father had lifelong contempt for politicians.
GORE VIDALWe are pleased to dismiss politics as entirely corrupt, if not financially, intellectually.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
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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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The media can’t get anything straight.
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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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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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I’m a fervent foe of water pollution, whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia’s tap water.
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What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?
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A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
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The American high school graduate is two years behind his English, French or German counterpart; in Alabama, God knows how far behind.
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Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
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Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life, a right action is consideration for the welfare of others.
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Some have deplored Lincoln’s indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off.
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Remember, I’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there.
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It is always a delicate matter, when a friend or acquaintance becomes president.
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The unfed mind devours itself.
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The United States is a madhouse.
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We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
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By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.
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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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Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.
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I am a novelist turned temporary adventurer, and I chose to write television, movies and plays for much the same reason that Henry Morgan selected the Spanish Main for his peculiar – and not dissimilar – sphere of operations.
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I never wanted to be a writer. I mean, that’s the last thing I wanted.
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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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Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He understood how the economy works. But because he had used various dodges to stay out of the Vietnam War, he came to office ill at ease with the military.
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I’m not a conspiracy theorist – I’m a conspiracy analyst.
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When I say ‘president,’ I still mean Roosevelt – wisely, I think.
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