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At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.


Gore Vidal

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Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy,...
ROBERT PEEL Writers since at least the heyday of Gore Vidal have bemoaned their audience's defection to othe...
GARTH RISK HALLBERG Gore Vidal has been a friend of mine for years, and he's one of the greatest writers in American...
CYBILL SHEPHERD We lived in a classless society. We'd spend a summer at Gore Vidal's house in Italy, but we ...
GABY HOFFMANN Faith is a euphemism for prejudice and religion is a euphemism for superstition
PAUL KELLER Like it or not, we’re still a primitive tribe ruled by fears, superstition and misinformation.
BILL MAHER 'Empire of Self' is a loving portrait of a very difficult man. Jay Parini, himself a gifted ...
JEROME CHARYN Public and employer opinion often defeat society's best interests with a prejudice against middl...
KATE SMITH Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and...
GORE VIDAL The best you can be at any given moment is yourself.
ELIZABETH ALRAUNE Prejudice is opinion without judgement.
VOLTAIRE A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
AMBROSE BIERCE Queerness isn't just Lady Gaga and overpriced drinks and fauxhawks. It's James Baldwin and B...
JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL Prejudice is an opinion without judgment
VOLTAIRE The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinion of its young people, those under ...
JOHANN VON GOETHE It is not at all clear how much the media influences public opinion and how much public opinion infl...
BRUCE JACKSON My life at the moment is a bit like my wardrobe. Organized chaos.
DAVID WENHAM Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.
HUEY NEWTON PREJUDICE, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
AMBROSE BIERCE Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.
DAVID LEVITHAN There are a lot of decent folks who have been given a lot of misinformation.
ED BOND Any case should be tried in a court of law and not a court of public opinion.
FREDA BLACK Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of...
MARQUIS DE SADE We're all stumbling towards the light with varying degrees of grace at any given moment.
BO LOZOFF We're all stumbling towards the light with varying degrees of grace at any given moment.
BO LOZOFF We're all stumbling towards the light with varying degrees of grace at any given moment.
BO LOZOFF That's my opinion, that his death was preventable. Absolutely. Because he had a pathology which is t...
LEO BOKERIA I paint according to the moment and the theme. I don't have any prejudice. Life concerns me.
RALPH ALLEN To stand on the
brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli...
ASK AND IT IS GIVEN There is freedom in stepping out and taking risks when you know at any given moment, you can always ...
EVA GREGORY The Israeli public's willingness to enlist, the warm embrace for the soldiers and the residents ...
YAIR LAPID There's only so much programming that the U.S. public will pay for at any given point of time.
TODD CHANKO At any given moment the choice to be happy is present- we just have to choose to be happy.
STEVE MARABOLI I paint according to the moment and the theme. I don't have any prejudice. Life concerns me.
RALPH ALLEN At any given moment, you have the power to say that this is NOT how the story is going to END
M.H.S. POURRI Human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a PROFOUND tendency t...
M. SCOTT PECK You can start anew at any given moment. Life is just the passage of time and it’s up to you to pas...
CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON Publicity is a great purifier because it sets in action the forces of public opinion, and in this co...
CHARLES EVANS HUGHES Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely that at any given moment the feeling which he...
THOMAS H. HUXLEY I came to know Gore Vidal in the mid-1980s, when I was living in southern Italy, virtually a neighbo...
JAY PARINI Freedom is to stand naked at the moment, having no expectations, nothing to lose or to gain. The emp...
GRIGORIS DEOUDIS Jon, in my opinion, on any given night, is the best front man in the business.
RICHIE SAMBORA It's all ultimately in the service of the play. At any given moment, you've got to be telling the st...
DOUGLAS LEVINE The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.
MARK TWAIN The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all
MARK TWAIN I do not know for sure if he's looking or flirting. But, I have an opinion - Gore remains a headline...
DONNA BRAZILE Public opinion is a second conscience.
WILLIAM R. ALGER Public opinion is a second conscience.
WILLIAM ALGER Laws that do not embody public opinion can never be enforced
ELBERT HUBBARD Given the well-known anti-Americanism of the Cuban and Venezuelan governments, rallies in Havana and...
DAN ERIKSON ...well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished ...
DIANA GABALDON Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
HENRY WARD BEECHER The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.
JAMES A. FROUDE There's a lot of misinformation out there. What we wanted to say is, let's at least get the facts an...
DICK RUGGE I just received a phone call regarding a "public opinion survey." I told them I had a poor opinion o...
E.R. ROCK This is the great object held out by this association; and the means of attaining it is illumination...
ADAM WEISHAUPT Not many child stars make it out of Hollywood alive or sane, and at any given time there are at leas...
MARA WILSON Al Gore has been a vocal supporter of environmental issues. We are appealing to Al Gore to use his p...
ROBIN SCHNEIDER It is great to shake off the trammels of the world and of public opinion . . . and become the creatu...
WILLIAM HAZLITT Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.
NICOLAS CHAMFORT Any deviation is looked upon as a perversion, is feared, and is usually a target of hatred and preju...
JOEY SKAGGS What we call public opinion is generally public sentiment.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI At the moment, we do not know who the responsible parties might be. The first consideration of any r...
MIKE CRIPPS Undermining life-affirming social solidarities and any viable notion of the public good, right-wing ...
HENRY GIROUX I had a year off, so my wife and I were heading to Italy to study Italian. We found a little house i...
JAY PARINI True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed wa...
ELIZABETH GILBERT Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most pron...
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH You're aware that at any given moment they can change the face of a game by returning a punt. They'r...
ABDUL HODGE There's a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.
NOAM CHOMSKY He is in many ways quite a right-wing isolationist. It's because some people are naïve enough to co...
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I've always regarded it as a test of character to dislike the Kennedys. I don't really respect anyon...
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Whatever he's feeling at a given moment is what he's always been and always will be feeling.
GARTH RISK HALLBERG Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.
MICHAEL CRICHTON It is not easy to describe the present position of legal opinion on advertising and free speech. Onl...
R. H. COASE Yes, speed is a concern for domestic public opinion polls and Iraqi public opinion, ... But they are...
LARRY DIAMOND There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
WINSTON CHURCHILL There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL Don't be swayed just because they say it's public opinion. Remember, public opinion is simple what e...
SOURCE UNKNOWN To create a moment of peace in the midst of chaos is to have control over one's mind.
TROY J. GAINEY At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas of which it is assumed that all right-thi...
GEORGE ORWELL Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.
RICHARD DAWKINS A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
WARREN BUFFETT A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
WARREN BUFFETT Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonst...
JOHN LE CARRE At times our lives seem like that of a tranquil island in a sea of chaos. The battle is to keep this...
SANJEEVA ANANTHAN When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from T...
PHYLLIS MCGINLEY When blithe to argument I come, / Though armed with facts, and merry, / May Providence protect me fr...
PHYLLIS MCGINLEY She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your he...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Whichever group is in ascension at a given moment is, historically speaking, both unlikely to acknow...
ELIZABETH BEAR I love scoring. Putting music to picture is a rewarding challenge and one that relies on interpretat...
LIZ PHAIR Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.
VINCENT VAN GOGH In America, public opinion is the leader.
FRANCES PERKINS Public opinion in this country is everything.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN I propose a Constitutional Amendment providing that, if any public official, elected or appointed, a...
L. NEIL SMITH Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE Nothing is easier than to find some individuals—in any group—who share a given writer’s opinio...
THOMAS SOWELL Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It's t...
PETER SHAFFER You cannot... predict what the users will want in any given moment.
FABIO HERNANDEZ When political and business leaders tell the public - any public - 'We don't trust you to ma...
PRESTON MANNING The Church has little idea how unorthodox it is at any given moment. If a church can't yet be perfec...
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

More Gore Vidal

Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, 'Well, so-and-so will like this,' which ...
GORE VIDAL McCain is significant in the sense that he has no significance at all on any subject.
GORE VIDAL I can understand companionship.
GORE VIDAL Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He u...
GORE VIDAL The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of 'Tales from Li...
GORE VIDAL I'm not paranoid, no. I'm different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
GORE VIDAL What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose p...
GORE VIDAL The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country - and we haven't seen them ...
GORE VIDAL As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a pol...
GORE VIDAL The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No Fi...
GORE VIDAL Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some eviden...
GORE VIDAL Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
GORE VIDAL I could be a lot happier. I could be the senator from Aerospace taking bribes, and be quite happy.
GORE VIDAL I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to ...
GORE VIDAL Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
GORE VIDAL Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness witho...
GORE VIDAL Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps twenty players, an...
GORE VIDAL That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness...
GORE VIDAL Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
GORE VIDAL For half a century photography has been the "art form" of the untalented. Obviously some pictures ar...
GORE VIDAL Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is...
GORE VIDAL Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence...
GORE VIDAL Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
GORE VIDAL It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Fr...
GORE VIDAL I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
GORE VIDAL There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo -- or heterosex...
GORE VIDAL Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex cer...
GORE VIDAL The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
GORE VIDAL Never have children, only grand children.
GORE VIDAL Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described,...
GORE VIDAL I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you ...
GORE VIDAL When Ronald Reagan's career in show business came to an end, he was hired to impersonate, first, a C...
GORE VIDAL How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time...
GORE VIDAL There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master...
GORE VIDAL Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is a...
GORE VIDAL The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No Fi...
GORE VIDAL For half a century, photography has been the art form of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are...
GORE VIDAL As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to ill...
GORE VIDAL There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
GORE VIDAL If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives ...
GORE VIDAL Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But the...
GORE VIDAL Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues an...
GORE VIDAL Laughing at someone else is an excellent way of learning how to laugh at oneself; and questioning wh...
GORE VIDAL It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imag...
GORE VIDAL Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, ...
GORE VIDAL To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours,...
GORE VIDAL I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual live...
GORE VIDAL Half the American population no longer reads newspapers: plainly, they are the clever half.
GORE VIDAL Style is knowing who you are, what to say, and not giving a damn.
GORE VIDAL All the other candidates are making speeches about how much they have done for their country, which ...
GORE VIDAL Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence t...
GORE VIDAL It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we...
GORE VIDAL It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
GORE VIDAL I'm a born-again atheist.
GORE VIDAL Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes i...
GORE VIDAL There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
GORE VIDAL Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL It is true, as Sartre once wrote, referring to French Army atrocities in Algeria, that the real trag...
GORE VIDAL We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us th...
GORE VIDAL For every Scott Fitzgerald concerned with the precise word and the selection of relevant incident, t...
GORE VIDAL On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a deb...
GORE VIDAL Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.
GORE VIDAL Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust a...
GORE VIDAL I am a novelist turned temporary adventurer, and I chose to write television, movies and plays for m...
GORE VIDAL I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
GORE VIDAL The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning th...
GORE VIDAL Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to ill...
GORE VIDAL There is only one party in the United States: the Property party... and it has two right wings: Repu...
GORE VIDAL To invent a war means that you've become a wartime president, and you can suspend much if not al...
GORE VIDAL By 1939, the Depression was back. Unemployment was huge. Roosevelt didn't have any quick fix. Re...
GORE VIDAL It's always best to stay out of other people's divorces. And their civil wars.
GORE VIDAL Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the t...
GORE VIDAL I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased beha...
GORE VIDAL Walter Lippmann suggests that the United States behaves like a society which thinks it is complete w...
GORE VIDAL Fortunately, our audiences are used to a kind of boredom in the theatre, and if the writer is skillf...
GORE VIDAL Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But the...
GORE VIDAL Jack Kennedy very much enjoyed Fletcher Knebel's thriller 'Seven Days in May,' later a f...
GORE VIDAL Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.
GORE VIDAL In August 1961, I visited President Kennedy at Hyannis Port. The Berlin Wall was going up, and he wa...
GORE VIDAL I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it's true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
GORE VIDAL The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
GORE VIDAL It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four per...
GORE VIDAL Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
GORE VIDAL No sooner does an American president take his oath of office than the speculation begins: Will he be...
GORE VIDAL That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
GORE VIDAL Envy is the central fact of American life.
GORE VIDAL I didn't mean to spend my life writing American history, which should have been taught in the sc...
GORE VIDAL I'm not a conspiracy theorist - I'm a conspiracy analyst.
GORE VIDAL By the end of World War II, we were the most powerful and least damaged of the great nations. We als...
GORE VIDAL Temperamentally, I am suspicious of belonging to anything. When I ran for office, I debated seriousl...
GORE VIDAL The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself a...
GORE VIDAL For certain people after 50, litigation takes the place of sex.
GORE VIDAL It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.
GORE VIDAL Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
GORE VIDAL For certain people after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex.
GORE VIDAL Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
GORE VIDAL I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to ...
GORE VIDAL Young people are more hopeful at a certain age than adults, but I suspect that's glandular. As for c...
GORE VIDAL I might be President by now if it weren't for this 'queer' thing
GORE VIDAL Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.
GORE VIDAL Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualifi...
GORE VIDAL A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.
GORE VIDAL The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who...
GORE VIDAL A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
GORE VIDAL All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
GORE VIDAL The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we ca...
GORE VIDAL Never have children, only grandchildren.
GORE VIDAL It makes no difference whom you vote for -- the two parties are really one party representing four p...
GORE VIDAL Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is ...
GORE VIDAL I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon. I cannot understand th...
GORE VIDAL Whenever a friend succeeds a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL Americans, in general, are ignorant, bigoted, and deeply unhappy with their declining incomes.
GORE VIDAL Television is now so desparately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
GORE VIDAL Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers...
GORE VIDAL There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
GORE VIDAL I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once...
GORE VIDAL I can't name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I'm told there are a fe...
GORE VIDAL I was raised in the Washington household of my grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, and h...
GORE VIDAL Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested...
GORE VIDAL I'm a fervent foe of water pollution, whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia's t...
GORE VIDAL He (Donald) is thorough and very careful not to take sides when there's insufficient evidence,
GORE VIDAL Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make se...
GORE VIDAL Rome... at its most decadent, had never thought of hiring an actor to go through the motions of bein...
GORE VIDAL Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in ...
GORE VIDAL Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself.
GORE VIDAL The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we ca...
GORE VIDAL All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
GORE VIDAL Didn't George Washington say, 'He who controls Afghanistan will carry New Jersey?'
GORE VIDAL On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congres...
GORE VIDAL Overcrowding in the cities is producing a collective madness in which irrational violence flourishes...
GORE VIDAL After the French Revolution, the world money power shifted from Paris to London. For three generatio...
GORE VIDAL Jews, blacks and homosexuals are despised by the Christian and Communist majorities of East and West...
GORE VIDAL The American press exists for one purpose only, and that is to convince Americans that they are livi...
GORE VIDAL To preserve the human race, it is now necessary to reorganize society. To this end, an Authority mus...
GORE VIDAL I don't even read most reviews, unless there is a potential lawsuit on view.
GORE VIDAL The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.
GORE VIDAL 'The Turner Diaries' is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseu...
GORE VIDAL Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life, a right action is consideration for the welfare of oth...
GORE VIDAL I like the way you always manage to state the obvious with a sense of real discovery.
GORE VIDAL The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning th...
GORE VIDAL What the Kinseyites and I had in common so long ago was the knowledge that homosexual and heterosexu...
GORE VIDAL There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexua...
GORE VIDAL In the German concentration camps, Jews wore yellow stars while homosexuals wore pink lambdas.
GORE VIDAL In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writ...
GORE VIDAL It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imag...
GORE VIDAL Trust a nitwit society like this one to think that there are only two categories - fag and straight.
GORE VIDAL Primarily, I am a prose writer with axes to grind, and the theatre is a good place to do the grindin...
GORE VIDAL Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fi...
GORE VIDAL Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
GORE VIDAL What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?
GORE VIDAL If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives ...
GORE VIDAL These people [Bush Administration] are for the most part rip-off artists. Notice that they're all ga...
GORE VIDAL The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttres...
GORE VIDAL Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
GORE VIDAL I don't see us winning the war. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims."
GORE VIDAL roughly 80 percent of police work in the United States has to do with the regulation of our private ...
GORE VIDAL I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults
GORE VIDAL It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author'...
GORE VIDAL I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small Amer...
GORE VIDAL Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He ...
GORE VIDAL Although Americans justify their self-interest in moral terms, their true interest is never itself m...
GORE VIDAL There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic ...
GORE VIDAL I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on an...
GORE VIDAL I don't want anything. I don't want a job. I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I tu...
GORE VIDAL Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose....
GORE VIDAL A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking tha...
GORE VIDAL I'm a born-again atheist
GORE VIDAL We are the United States of Amnesia.
GORE VIDAL Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four per...
GORE VIDAL I am an obsessive rewriter, doing one draft and then another and another, usually five. In a way, I ...
GORE VIDAL That is New York. I pointed to the waterfront just ahead as if the city were mine.
GORE VIDAL For certain people, after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex
GORE VIDAL A court is the most depressing place on earth. Wherever there is a throne, one may observe in rich d...
GORE VIDAL The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But it has been much studied.
GORE VIDAL Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience al...
GORE VIDAL To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religi...
GORE VIDAL Since we have literally targeted our enemies, the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, rogues wil...
GORE VIDAL I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take ...
GORE VIDAL World War II made prosperous the United States, which had been undergoing a depression for a dozen y...
GORE VIDAL To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perce...
GORE VIDAL Remember, I'm West Point, where I was born. My father went there.
GORE VIDAL Europe began as the relatively empty, uncivilized Wild West of Asia; then the Western Hemisphere bec...
GORE VIDAL Everything's wrong on Wikipedia.
GORE VIDAL You hear all this whining going on, 'Where are our great writers?' The thing I might feel do...
GORE VIDAL Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and...
GORE VIDAL Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans [i.e., Christians] say they believe a...
GORE VIDAL Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.
GORE VIDAL Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel...
GORE VIDAL The Pentagon talks about our power to 'overkill' Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps for...
GORE VIDAL The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
GORE VIDAL In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king's death or upo...
GORE VIDAL My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees...
GORE VIDAL ...is not all philosophy but preparation for a serene dying?
GORE VIDAL The failure of Hellenism has been, largely, a matter of organization. Rome never tried to impose any...
GORE VIDAL But like so many others nowadays, poor Julian wanted to believe that man's life is profoundly more s...
GORE VIDAL