The United States is a madhouse.
GORE VIDALThere is only one party in the United States: the Property party… and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
-
-
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.
GORE VIDAL -
As for my support for Obama, remember that I was brought up in Washington. It was an all-black city when I was a kid. And I’ve always been very pro-African-American – or whatever phrase we now use.
GORE VIDAL -
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
GORE VIDAL -
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.
GORE VIDAL -
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.
GORE VIDAL -
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
GORE VIDAL -
On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia.
GORE VIDAL -
The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of ‘Tales from Livy’ that I’d found in my grandfather’s library.
GORE VIDAL -
I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it’s true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
GORE VIDAL -
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they’re scraping the top of the barrel.
GORE VIDAL -
I’m always an optimist!
GORE VIDAL -
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.
GORE VIDAL -
It’s always best to stay out of other people’s divorces. And their civil wars.
GORE VIDAL -
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 -
Americans, in general, are ignorant, bigoted, and deeply unhappy with their declining incomes.
GORE VIDAL -
He who is last had best laugh.
GORE VIDAL -
By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.
GORE VIDAL -
One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.
GORE VIDAL -
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.
GORE VIDAL -
I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
GORE VIDAL -
The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.
GORE VIDAL -
Since we have literally targeted our enemies, the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, rogues will take out our cities, presumably from spaceships.
GORE VIDAL -
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL -
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.
GORE VIDAL -
In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.
GORE VIDAL -
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
GORE VIDAL