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It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Gore Vidal

You cannot deprive somebody of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, because that is a right – constitutional right.
GORE VIDAL

Happiness Liberty Life Right
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
Certainly ‘The Judgment of Paris’ was the novel in which I found my own voice.
GORE VIDAL

Finding Judgement Myself Novel Voice
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
GORE VIDAL

Election Illumination Language Liberal Society Vote
It is always a delicate matter, when a friend or acquaintance becomes president.
GORE VIDAL

Delicate Friendship President
Some 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.
GORE VIDAL

Agreement Father Fellow Himself Raise Secret
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
GORE VIDAL

Democracy Form High Ourselves Scale
It’s always best to stay out of other people’s divorces. And their civil wars.
GORE VIDAL

Best Divorce Finding Ourselves People Stay
Since we have literally targeted our enemies, the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, rogues will take out our cities, presumably from spaceships.
GORE VIDAL

Assumption Enemy Ourselves Space Target
One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.
GORE VIDAL

Choice Journey Oneself Road
He who is last had best laugh.
GORE VIDAL

End Himself Laughter
I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
GORE VIDAL

Different Enemy Oneself Reality
I don’t even read most reviews, unless there is a potential lawsuit on view.
GORE VIDAL

Law Myself Potential Reading Review View
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
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
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

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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