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

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
In the German concentration camps, Jews wore yellow stars while homosexuals wore pink lambdas.
GORE VIDAL

Camp Concentration Discrimination German Oppression
I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it’s true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
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Angry Myself Nature Thinking
I’m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.
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Appearance Cold Love Warm Water Yourself
I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
GORE VIDAL

Different Enemy Oneself Reality
The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of ‘Tales from Livy’ that I’d found in my grandfather’s library.
GORE VIDAL

Book Edition Grown Library Reading
I can understand companionship.
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Companionship Understand
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
Nearly everyone who goes into a campaign is not only eager for the place he hopes to fill but for what might come after.
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Filling Himself Hope Place
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
It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
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Age Believe Exercise Imagination Spirit
After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.
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Diminish Interesting Life Oneself Story
A friend was surprised to hear me say that there was not one moment of my past that I would like to relive.
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Friendship Moments Myself Past Surprise
I’m always an optimist!
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Myself Optimism
As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Reading
Remember, I’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there.
GORE VIDAL

Born Father Myself Remember

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

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

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Popular Authors

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