You cannot deprive somebody of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, because that is a right – constitutional right.
GORE VIDALWhat is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.
More Gore Vidal Quotes
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Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
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Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
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In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you’re a great writer, you must say that you are.
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We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
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The United States is the only civilized country in the world to class its teachers at the bottom of the social scale.
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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.
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There is only one party in the United States: the Property party… and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
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A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
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As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
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Corporations must pay tax.
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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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All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
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Baseball is the favorite American sport because it’s so slow. Any idiot can follow it. And just about any idiot can play it.
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Americans have no idea of the extent of their government’s mischief… the number of military strikes we have made unprovoked, against other countries, since 1947 is more than 250.
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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.
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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.
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Anybody who is stupid enough to want to be remembered deserves to be forgotten right now.
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Since we have literally targeted our enemies, the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, rogues will take out our cities, presumably from spaceships.
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On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia.
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I hate nobody.
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My father had lifelong contempt for politicians.
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The Turner Diaries’ is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.
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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.
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The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.
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It is always a delicate matter, when a friend or acquaintance becomes president.
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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