As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
GORE VIDALSome 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.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?
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The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
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Envy is the central fact of American life.
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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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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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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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Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
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Policemen are seldom tried for their crimes, or indeed, held responsible for what they do, which disturbs the peace and causes distress among the orderly.
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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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Nearly everyone who goes into a campaign is not only eager for the place he hopes to fill but for what might come after.
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I know a lot of the Annapolis breed.
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A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.
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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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I don’t even read most reviews, unless there is a potential lawsuit on view.
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There is only one party in the United States: the Property party… and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
GORE VIDAL