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 VIDALThe media can’t get anything straight.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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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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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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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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Europe began as the relatively empty, uncivilized Wild West of Asia; then the Western Hemisphere became the Wild West of Europe. Now the sun has set in our West and risen once more in the East.
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Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They’re interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil.
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The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
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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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Temperamentally, I am suspicious of belonging to anything. When I ran for office, I debated seriously whether or not to run as an independent because I was not eager to be saddled with the Democratic Party, because any party label is committing.
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In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.
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On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia.
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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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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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I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
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In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do 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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The United States is a madhouse.
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I’m always an optimist!
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Primarily, I am a prose writer with axes to grind, and the theatre is a good place to do the grinding in. I prefer comedy to ‘serious’ drama because I believe one can get the ax sharper on the comedic stone.
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Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
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Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
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A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
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I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
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Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery.
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The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.
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By the end of World War II, we were the most powerful and least damaged of the great nations. We also had most of the money. America’s hegemony lasted exactly five years.
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As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
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