In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.
GORE VIDALAs 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.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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There’s a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
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The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
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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.
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I can understand companionship.
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Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
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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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Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
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I never wanted to be a writer. I mean, that’s the last thing I wanted.
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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.
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Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they’re scraping the top of the barrel.
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The Pentagon talks about our power to ‘overkill’ Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps forty-eight times. For my tax money, it is sufficient to overkill them once.
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Corporations must pay tax.
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The media can’t get anything straight.
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All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
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Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL