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It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Gore Vidal

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
Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL

Note Suicide Writing
In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.
GORE VIDAL

Best Thinking Writing
Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.
GORE VIDAL

Myself Novel Reading Writing
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
GORE VIDAL

Bank Loyalty President
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
GORE VIDAL

Definition Preparation President
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 invent a war means that you’ve become a wartime president, and you can suspend much if not all of the Bill of Rights.
GORE VIDAL

Invention President Suspend War
By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.
GORE VIDAL

Himself Man Material President Time
I am only at home in the present.
GORE VIDAL

Home Oneself Present
It’s odd to meet a rather elderly man who says, ‘I’ve been reading you all my life.’ It makes you feel a slight chill.
GORE VIDAL

Feeling Life Man Yourself
I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
GORE VIDAL

Different Enemy Oneself Reality
There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
GORE VIDAL

Poem Police
A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.
GORE VIDAL

Fact Identity Kind Race Religious Tribal
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 human race is plainly nothing in eternity, but to us, in time, it is everything and ought not to die.
GORE VIDAL

Death Forever Human Race

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

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It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

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