Gore Vidal quotes - page 2

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)
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice. View quote
Gore Vidal
The unfed mind devours itself. View quote
Gore Vidal
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies. View quote
Gore Vidal
Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink. View quote
Gore Vidal
Envy is the central fact of American life. View quote
Gore Vidal
The folly of the clever is always more than that of the dull. View quote
Gore Vidal
Andy Warhol is the only genius with an IQ of 60. View quote
Gore Vidal
Everything's wrong on Wikipedia. View quote
Gore Vidal
American writers want to be not good but great and so are neither. View quote
Gore Vidal
The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie ''answers'' questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare. (Gore Vidal)
Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it's gossip with some point to it. That's why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true. View quote
Gore Vidal
You know, I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country. View quote
Gore Vidal
Liberal' comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see why the word had to be erased from our political lexicon. View quote
Gore Vidal
Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine. View quote
Gore Vidal
Nothing that Shakespeare ever invented was to equal Lincoln's invention of himself and, in the process, us. View quote
Gore Vidal
We're supposed to procreate and society, god knows, is ferocious on the subject. Heterosexuality is considered such a great and natural good that you have to execute people and put them in prison if they don't practice this glorious act. View quote
Gore Vidal
Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it. View quote
Gore Vidal
You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It's just grotesque. View quote
Gore Vidal
We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing. View quote
Gore Vidal
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so. (Gore Vidal)
There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party ... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. View quote
Gore Vidal
At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our sky-godders, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that looney text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area. View quote
Gore Vidal
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. View quote
Gore Vidal
That peculiarly American religion, President-worship. View quote
Gore Vidal