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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

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.
GORE VIDAL

Damage End Greatness Nation Powerful War
Corporations must pay tax.
GORE VIDAL

Corporation Pay Tax
I can understand companionship.
GORE VIDAL

Companionship Understand
Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
GORE VIDAL

Attack Death Earth Ourselves Thinking
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL

Adult Consent Myself
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
GORE VIDAL

Candidate Democracy Issues Place
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.
GORE VIDAL

Appearance Cold Love Warm Water Yourself
Boys don’t like girls around when they do boy things.
GORE VIDAL

Character Human Male Nature
Jack Kennedy very much enjoyed Fletcher Knebel’s thriller ‘Seven Days in May,’ later a film. The story: a jingo based on the real-life Admiral Arthur Radford plans a military coup to take over the White House.
GORE VIDAL

Enjoyment Life Military Reality Story
In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.
GORE VIDAL

Best Thinking Writing
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.
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Election Illumination Language Liberal Society Vote
A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.
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Fact Identity Kind Race Religious Tribal
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.
GORE VIDAL

Change Reality Time Torture Victim
I was the most famous kid in the United States. That was 1936.
GORE VIDAL

Children Country Famous Past Time
Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Novel Reading Writing
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
GORE VIDAL

Children Expectation Forever

The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.

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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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