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 VIDALSome of my father’s fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, ‘I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any.’ We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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Some have deplored Lincoln’s indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off.
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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.
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From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out… It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion.
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The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.
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Does one ever read a politician’s books?
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Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery.
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After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.
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I was like everyone else when Obama was elected – optimistic.
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Actually, I can’t remember when I was not writing.
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I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
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What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.
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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.
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The American high school graduate is two years behind his English, French or German counterpart; in Alabama, God knows how far behind.
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I don’t even read most reviews, unless there is a potential lawsuit on view.
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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.
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