The United States is a madhouse.
GORE VIDALAt any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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I was like everyone else when Obama was elected – optimistic.
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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.
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Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
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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.
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We are pleased to dismiss politics as entirely corrupt, if not financially, intellectually.
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As for my support for Obama, remember that I was brought up in Washington. It was an all-black city when I was a kid. And I’ve always been very pro-African-American – or whatever phrase we now use.
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The media can’t get anything straight.
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I’ve yet to read a memoir by anyone I’ve known at all well that came anywhere near to the truth.
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Primarily, I am a prose writer with axes to grind, and the theatre is a good place to do the grinding in. I prefer comedy to ‘serious’ drama because I believe one can get the ax sharper on the comedic stone.
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It’s always best to stay out of other people’s divorces. And their civil wars.
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I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
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Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
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Never have children, only grandchildren.
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Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.
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What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I’m a realist.
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