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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

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
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.
GORE VIDAL

Money Talk Tax Time
The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.
GORE VIDAL

Country Finding People State
Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.
GORE VIDAL

Blind Eyes Ignore
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
GORE VIDAL

Confidence Personality Style Yourself
The United States is a madhouse.
GORE VIDAL

Country Home Madness State
I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it’s true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
GORE VIDAL

Angry Myself Nature Thinking
In essence, Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism Act would set up a national police force, over the long-dead bodies of the founders.
GORE VIDAL

Act Finding Force National Police
That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.
GORE VIDAL

Busy Oneself Sadness Writing
There is only one party in the United States: the Property party… and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
GORE VIDAL

Democracy Party Politics Republic
Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.
GORE VIDAL

Adult Advertise Captive Rise World
I was the most famous kid in the United States. That was 1936.
GORE VIDAL

Children Country Famous Past Time
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
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?
GORE VIDAL

Culture Joke Production See
To preserve the human race, it is now necessary to reorganize society. To this end, an Authority must be created with the power to control human population, to redistribute food, to purify air, water, soil, to re-pattern the cities.
GORE VIDAL

Food Human Pattern Population Preserve Race Recognition
I don’t even read most reviews, unless there is a potential lawsuit on view.
GORE VIDAL

Law Myself Potential Reading Review View
Every country should have at least one King Farouk.
GORE VIDAL

Country Oneself
It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author’s experience worked out literally.
GORE VIDAL

Essential Experience Literature Natural Work
I can understand companionship.
GORE VIDAL

Companionship Understand
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
GORE VIDAL

Enough Failure Success
We are pleased to dismiss politics as entirely corrupt, if not financially, intellectually.
GORE VIDAL

Financial Intellectual Politics
The media can’t get anything straight.
GORE VIDAL

Media Straight
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
GORE VIDAL

Missing Myself World
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
GORE VIDAL

Bank Loyalty President
In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you’re a great writer, you must say that you are.
GORE VIDAL

Greatness Loud Race Yourself
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
GORE VIDAL

Class Genius heavy Ourselves Rule System
It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham. He was always so entirely there.
GORE VIDAL

Difficult Himself Honesty Pretend

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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