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There’s a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.

Gore Vidal

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

Himself Man Material President Time
Some have deplored Lincoln’s indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off.
GORE VIDAL

Difference Himself Religion
When I say ‘president,’ I still mean Roosevelt – wisely, I think.
GORE VIDAL

Myself President Thinking
Jack Kennedy very much enjoyed Fletcher Knebel’s thriller ‘Seven Days in May,’ later a film. The story: a jingo based on the real-life Admiral Arthur Radford plans a military coup to take over the White House.
GORE VIDAL

Enjoyment Life Military Reality Story
The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
GORE VIDAL

Natural President Rise Suspicion
Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL

Note Suicide Writing
I’m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.
GORE VIDAL

Appearance Cold Love Warm Water Yourself
The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.
GORE VIDAL

Country Finding People State
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL

Adult Consent Myself
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
GORE VIDAL

Beautiful Language Ourselves Word
There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
GORE VIDAL

Poem Police
I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
GORE VIDAL

Different Enemy Oneself Reality
Obama just came swiftly out of nowhere, which was a relief to those of us who care about the Republic, and at first he seemed a very good thing.
GORE VIDAL

Goodness Government Himself Politics President Public relief
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
The Turner Diaries’ is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.
GORE VIDAL

Race Teacher Writing
Remember, I’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there.
GORE VIDAL

Born Father Myself Remember
Baseball is the favorite American sport because it’s so slow. Any idiot can follow it. And just about any idiot can play it.
GORE VIDAL

Baseball Play Slow Sports
World War II made prosperous the United States, which had been undergoing a depression for a dozen years, and made very rich those magnates and their managers who govern the republic – with many a wink – in the people’s name.
GORE VIDAL

Depression Government Manager Name People Public Rich War
The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.
GORE VIDAL

Need Reminder Theatre Well Worth
The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But it has been much studied.
GORE VIDAL

Day Study Truth Unknown
American history has fallen more and more into the hands of academics.
GORE VIDAL

Academics Fall Hands History
I am not, at heart, a playwright.
GORE VIDAL

Heart Personality Play
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
GORE VIDAL

Democracy Form High Ourselves Scale
In character, as it were, the writer settles for an impression of what happened rather than creating the sense of the thing happening.
GORE VIDAL

Character Creation Impression Myself Settle Writing
I’m always an optimist!
GORE VIDAL

Myself Optimism
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.
GORE VIDAL

Goodness Known Ourselves Society
Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.
GORE VIDAL

Build Meaning Novel Sex

There’s a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.

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There’s a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.

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