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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.

Gore Vidal

As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Reading
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 VIDAL

Election Illumination Language Liberal Society Vote
Americans, in general, are ignorant, bigoted, and deeply unhappy with their declining incomes.
GORE VIDAL

Decline Ignorance Income Sadness
The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
GORE VIDAL

Himself Interesting Money
In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.
GORE VIDAL

Novel Problem Shape Writing
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
GORE VIDAL

Definition Preparation President
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL

Death Friendship Myself Success
Gossip is conversation about people.
GORE VIDAL

Conversation Gossip People
I’m a fervent foe of water pollution, whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia’s tap water.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Nature Pollution Water
The American high school graduate is two years behind his English, French or German counterpart; in Alabama, God knows how far behind.
GORE VIDAL

God Graduation Known Yourself
I am not, at heart, a playwright.
GORE VIDAL

Heart Personality Play
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
GORE VIDAL

Active Literature Lose Time Virtue World Writing
Corporations must pay tax.
GORE VIDAL

Corporation Pay Tax
Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.
GORE VIDAL

Blind Eyes Ignore
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
GORE VIDAL

Democracy Form High Ourselves Scale
When I say ‘president,’ I still mean Roosevelt – wisely, I think.
GORE VIDAL

Myself President Thinking

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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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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Popular Authors

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