black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Obama just came swiftly out of nowhere, which was a relief to those of us who care about the Republic, and at first he seemed a very good thing.

Gore Vidal

Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit, it will be repeated over and over again.
GORE VIDAL

Government Repeat Willing
I can understand companionship.
GORE VIDAL

Companionship Understand
To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religion and philosophy.
GORE VIDAL

Government Need People Philosophy Religion
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
GORE VIDAL

Definition Preparation President
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
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
GORE VIDAL

Human Myself People Problem Solution
Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Novel Reading Writing
Every country should have at least one King Farouk.
GORE VIDAL

Country Oneself
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.
GORE VIDAL

Need Reminder Theatre Well Worth
TV news is not very instructive.
GORE VIDAL

Instruction One Liner
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
GORE VIDAL

Death Department Nation State
What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.
GORE VIDAL

Book Fact Kind Loose Opinion Popular Question Review Treat
Some 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.
GORE VIDAL

Agreement Father Fellow Himself Raise Secret
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
From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out… It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion.
GORE VIDAL

Colony Mass Rebel War
A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.
GORE VIDAL

Fact Identity Kind Race Religious Tribal

Obama just came swiftly out of nowhere, which was a relief to those of us who care about the Republic, and at first he seemed a very good thing.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Obama just came swiftly out of nowhere, which was a relief to those of us who care about the Republic, and at first he seemed a very good thing.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Gore Vidal Quotes