One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.
GORE VIDAL
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.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.
GORE VIDAL -
Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He understood how the economy works. But because he had used various dodges to stay out of the Vietnam War, he came to office ill at ease with the military.
GORE VIDAL -
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Some have deplored Lincoln’s indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off.
GORE VIDAL -
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
GORE VIDAL -
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.
GORE VIDAL -
Boys don’t like girls around when they do boy things.
GORE VIDAL -
There is only one party in the United States: the Property party… and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
GORE VIDAL -
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
GORE VIDAL -
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
GORE VIDAL -
I can understand companionship.
GORE VIDAL -
To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
GORE VIDAL -
I’m always an optimist!
GORE VIDAL -
I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
GORE VIDAL -
As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a police state, at least in a police city.
GORE VIDAL -
In the German concentration camps, Jews wore yellow stars while homosexuals wore pink lambdas.
GORE VIDAL