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Remember, I’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there.

Gore Vidal

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
Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
GORE VIDAL

Evidence Figure Reading Speech
Actually, I can’t remember when I was not writing.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Remember Writing
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
I was the most famous kid in the United States. That was 1936.
GORE VIDAL

Children Country Famous Past Time
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

Economy Himself President Understand Work
I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
GORE VIDAL

Different Enemy Oneself Reality
Envy is the central fact of American life.
GORE VIDAL

Central Fact Life
Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.
GORE VIDAL

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

Camp Concentration Discrimination German Oppression
Between fourteen and nineteen, I must have begun and abandoned six novels.
GORE VIDAL

Age Beginning Myself
Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, ‘Well, so-and-so will like this,’ which you do when you’re younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.
GORE VIDAL

Contemporary Realize Young Yourself
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
Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.
GORE VIDAL

Build Meaning Novel Sex
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 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
I was raised in the Washington household of my grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, and have known politicians intimately all my life.
GORE VIDAL

Childhood Home Life Myself Politician Raise
As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Reading
I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased behaving like Nazis, no comparison would come to mind.
GORE VIDAL

Behave Comparison Mindset Myself Team
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
GORE VIDAL

Hope Newspaper Oneself People Reading
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL

Death Friendship Myself Success
A friend was surprised to hear me say that there was not one moment of my past that I would like to relive.
GORE VIDAL

Friendship Moments Myself Past Surprise
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.
GORE VIDAL

Choice Democracy Feeling Perspective Politics
There’s a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
GORE VIDAL

Identity Myself
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
Boys don’t like girls around when they do boy things.
GORE VIDAL

Character Human Male Nature
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.
GORE VIDAL

Age Believe Exercise Imagination Spirit

Remember, I’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there.

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Remember, I’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there.

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