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One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

Gore Vidal

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
GORE VIDAL

Attack Death Earth Ourselves Thinking
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 cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.
GORE VIDAL

Fascination Myself Remember
I am only at home in the present.
GORE VIDAL

Home Oneself Present
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.
GORE VIDAL

Elimination Management Media Object Opinion World
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
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
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?
GORE VIDAL

Culture Joke Production See
The Pentagon talks about our power to ‘overkill’ Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps forty-eight times. For my tax money, it is sufficient to overkill them once.
GORE VIDAL

Money Talk Tax Time
It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham. He was always so entirely there.
GORE VIDAL

Difficult Himself Honesty Pretend
As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a police state, at least in a police city.
GORE VIDAL

Civil Finding Liberty Live Police
We are pleased to dismiss politics as entirely corrupt, if not financially, intellectually.
GORE VIDAL

Financial Intellectual Politics
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
GORE VIDAL

Children Expectation Forever
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 never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
GORE VIDAL

Appearance Chance Missing Television
On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia.
GORE VIDAL

Congress Form Man Weight

One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

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One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

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Popular Authors

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