Gore Vidal quotes - page 7

We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns. (Gore Vidal)
I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise. View quote
Gore Vidal
We are all so simple at heart that become unfathomable to one another. View quote
Gore Vidal
They already had contingency plans ready in case of terrorism, violence, whatever, which they had inherited from Clinton, who had put together some terrible legislation after Timothy McVeigh blew up the building in Oklahoma City. View quote
Gore Vidal
Must one have a heart of stone to read The Ballad of Reading Gaol without laughing? (In life, practically no one ever gets to kill the thing he hates, much less loves.) And did not De Profundis plumb for all time the shallows of the most reported love affair of the past hundred years, rivalling even that of Wallis and David, its every nuance (O Bosie!) known to all, while trembling rosy lips yet form, over and over again, those doom-laden syllables The Cadogan Hotel? View quote
Gore Vidal
No one can tell another man is true. Truth is all around us...Truth is where ever man has glimpsed divinity. View quote
Gore Vidal
Anais Nin gave me my most original, or so I thought, creation.As I read Incest, I realized that something which I had always taken to be unique, the voice of Myra Breckinridge, was actually that of Anaïs in all the flowing megalomania of the diaries. Of course, I had not read the diaries then, but even so, if only for that one thundering voice, I am forever in her debt. View quote
Gore Vidal
By definition a bore is predictable. if you think you know in advance what a man is apt to say or do, you are not apt to be disagreeably surprised by him. View quote
Gore Vidal
Post-9/11, the American media were filled with pre-emptory denunciations of unpatriotic 'conspiracy theorists', who not only are always with us but are usually easy for the media to discredit since it is an article of faith that there are no conspiracies in American life. View quote
Gore Vidal
Now we have a totalitarian government. And the totalitarian government wants to watch everybody, total surveillance of everyone. They listen to the telephone conversations, they look at your credit cards, they look where you travel. We are totally policed. This is contrary to everything in our Constitution. View quote
Gore Vidal
In any case, rather like priests who have forgotten the meaning of the prayers they chant, we shall go on for quite a long time talking of books and writing books, pretending all the while not to notice that the church is empty and the parishioners have gone elsewhere to attend other gods, perhaps in silence or with new words. (Gore Vidal)
There is no terror equal that of the ignorant in a strange place. View quote
Gore Vidal
...American society, literary or lay, tends to be humorless. What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke? View quote
Gore Vidal
We are all in the habit of censuring the great, as if we were popular playwrights, when in fact ordinary folk are quite as devious and as willful and as desperate to survive (if not prevail) as are thee great; particularly philosophers. View quote
Gore Vidal
Modern Christianity is a encyclopedia of traditional superstition. View quote
Gore Vidal
Basler finds my Lincoln the 'phoniest historical novel I have ever had the pleasure of reading.'... Also, 'more than half the book could never have happened as told.' Unfortunately, he doesn't say which half. If I knew, we could then cut it free from the phony half and publish the result as Basler's Vidal's Lincoln. View quote
Gore Vidal
Constantinople has no past; only a noisy present and a splendid future, if the auguries are to be believed. View quote
Gore Vidal
The rhetoric of hate is often most effective when couched in the idiom of love. View quote
Gore Vidal
Books always cost more in those cities where they are least read! View quote
Gore Vidal
I complain about the United States not being Athens. I certainly say we are a very good Roman republic, and the lies are based upon the most advanced techniques of advertising, which is the only art form my country has ever created - the television commercial - and we sell soap and presidents in the same fashion. Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back. View quote
Gore Vidal
Constantine was never a true Galilean; he merely used Christianity to extend his dominion over the world. He was a shrewd professional soldier, badly educated and not in the least interested in philosophy, though some perverse taste in him was hugely satisfied by doctrinal disputes; the mad haggling of bishops fascinated him. (Gore Vidal)
There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all. View quote
Gore Vidal
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin. View quote
Gore Vidal
Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent. View quote
Gore Vidal
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke? View quote
Gore Vidal