It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
GORE VIDALAmerican history has fallen more and more into the hands of academics.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.
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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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I never wanted to be a writer. I mean, that’s the last thing I wanted.
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Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.
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I could be a lot happier. I could be the senator from Aerospace taking bribes, and be quite happy.
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I was raised in the Washington household of my grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, and have known politicians intimately all my life.
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You hear all this whining going on, ‘Where are our great writers?’ The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?
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I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased behaving like Nazis, no comparison would come to mind.
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Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.
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The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.
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Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they’re scraping the top of the barrel.
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To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
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At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.
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Some of my father’s fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, ‘I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any.’ We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.
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Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
GORE VIDAL