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All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

Gore Vidal

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
Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
GORE VIDAL

Attack Death Earth Ourselves Thinking
American history has fallen more and more into the hands of academics.
GORE VIDAL

Academics Fall Hands History
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

Active Literature Lose Time Virtue World Writing
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
What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I’m a realist.
GORE VIDAL

Journalism Reality World
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
I can’t name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I’m told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don’t print them in ‘The New York Times.’
GORE VIDAL

Criticism Literature Myself Name University
If you are a Representative and want to be a Senator, you must be careful not to do anything which might upset the various forces you need to harness to get elected.
GORE VIDAL

Election Force 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
A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.
GORE VIDAL

Fact Identity Kind Race Religious Tribal
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

Goodness Known Ourselves Society
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
GORE VIDAL

Audience Drink Writing
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.
GORE VIDAL

Elimination Management Media Object Opinion World
The media can’t get anything straight.
GORE VIDAL

Media Straight
I am a novelist turned temporary adventurer, and I chose to write television, movies and plays for much the same reason that Henry Morgan selected the Spanish Main for his peculiar – and not dissimilar – sphere of operations.
GORE VIDAL

Adventure Movie Myself Novel Operation Play Sphere Temporary

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

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All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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