The unfed mind devours itself.
GORE VIDALWhat the police in their ignorance have not figured out is that they have lost all credibility since World War II. They are sort of parasites on the fringe of society and do no particular good for anyone except possibly themselves.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
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Certainly ‘The Judgment of Paris’ was the novel in which I found my own voice.
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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 exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.
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Does one ever read a politician’s books?
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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 the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
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World War II made prosperous the United States, which had been undergoing a depression for a dozen years, and made very rich those magnates and their managers who govern the republic – with many a wink – in the people’s name.
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Everything’s wrong on Wikipedia.
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Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
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Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
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I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it’s true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
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The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But it has been much studied.
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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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Every country should have at least one King Farouk.
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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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Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
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I’m not a conspiracy theorist – I’m a conspiracy analyst.
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I’m always an optimist!
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American history has fallen more and more into the hands of academics.
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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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After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.
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A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.
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It is true, as Sartre once wrote, referring to French Army atrocities in Algeria, that the real tragedy in our time is that any of us can be, interchangeably, victim or torturer.
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All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
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The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.
GORE VIDAL