Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil.


Gore Vidal

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in ...
GORE VIDAL
Writers since at least the heyday of Gore Vidal have bemoaned their audience's defection to othe...
GARTH RISK HALLBERG
When you're the object of everyone's affection, make no mistake about it: you are an object....
JENNETTE MCCURDY
No, I'm not interested in politics. I have zero interest. I have interest in hope and people.
JAY-Z
Some companies have given disappointing results. Their shares suffer in an environment with risks, i...
EDWIN SLAGHEKKE
You can't deal with being odd?
...

Become like them...

Become drug delear...
DEYTH BANGER
Well all the big companies are really panicked by the internet thing and all that, and sales went do...
JACK BRUCE
I'm not at all interested in the brave who fight against the odds and win. I am interested in th...
KAZUO ISHIGURO
Once you're in the presence of people who have put their lives actively on the line, repeatedly,...
BEN FOSTER
I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel...
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL
With the Red Sox, you have more of a literary interest in it. You know they're going to lose; yo...
D. B. SWEENEY
You definitely have to watch them all the time. They're grabbing things, putting things in their mou...
ELIZABETH MARTINEZ
Few Americans have ever met their Congresspeople. They don't see them at the grocery store; they...
BEN SHAPIRO
We're headed towards a fascist economy in which you have big government, big corporations and bi...
WAYNE ROGERS
I'm interested in having people who have no direct interest in the bidding process to provide indepe...
JACK KNOWLTON
The people that make this country work, the people who pay on their mortgages, the people getting up...
RUSH LIMBAUGH
Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Pick people who are interested in what you&#...
RUSSELL SIMMONS
We lived in a classless society. We'd spend a summer at Gore Vidal's house in Italy, but we ...
GABY HOFFMANN
People who work in financial services don't have one shred of concern about the well-being of th...
BARRY SCHWARTZ
When you have countries that have a lot of minerals and diamonds and oil and are in business with co...
CLAIRE DENIS
Social technology gives leaders a vital new platform with which to connect their companies to the my...
SIMON MAINWARING
When you look at people who are successful, you will find that they aren't the people who are mo...
ARSENE WENGER
My experience with smart lay people who are involved in things like this is that they usually have s...
JAMES HEBERT
I think in South America people are very, uh, they have no inhibitions and wear their hearts on thei...
BERNARD SUMNER
You know, I've been at INC. for 23 years now and I've seen thousands of companies and I'd put ECCO r...
BO BURLINGHAM
Georgians aren't interested in labels or affiliation, they're interested in solutions. And t...
PAUL BROUN
The people against whom I defended my country in the war ... have an interest in silencing me and ca...
ZDENKO TOMANOVIC
Bulgaria has been deindustrialized by interest groups who extracted state assets like oil states ext...
IVAN KRASTEV
I have an expression I use as I've gone around the world through my career: 'You never tell ...
JOE BIDEN
What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You're all Muslim, so now you're a coun...
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Now they have a riddle.

- Criminal Minds
DEYTH BANGER
You know when you're young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in thei...
CLINT EASTWOOD
Nobody should be too boastful or too proud about their security because there are people who have a ...
RANDALL L. STEPHENSON
Members of Congress have more in common with the people they hobnob in Washington, D.C., than they d...
BEN SHAPIRO
The Jesuits I know who have died and all their lives were great teachers, they're the least reme...
DANIEL BERRIGAN
I see a lot of actors that are doing things to please their coaches, their teachers in the past. The...
TERRY CREWS
We're novices. We have friends now who are part of the freshman class who in some cases have run...
MAX BURNS
Maybe our young people are not as vacuous as we would like to lead ourselves to believe - that all t...
DAVID JAMES ELLIOTT
I've always been interested in films where you can identify with the actors. Where you can be in...
ADRIAN LYNE
She was intimidating and all I could do was sit back on the couch as she paced back and forth, slowl...
IN THE MAKING
My dad and grandpa were in the army and as a country singer you're constantly playing at militar...
DIERKS BENTLEY
There are just some really beautiful people in the world. When you're walking down the street, o...
MARY-KATE OLSEN
If you read our Founding Fathers, people like Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson - what we're doing...
RICK SANTELLI
If you talk to many people in the Northeast and the West Coast, they don't believe in gender differe...
LEONARD SAX
When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people...
ROALD DAHL
Most people don't want to change. They're comfortable and set in their ways. But in order to...
COLIN KAEPERNICK
Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly countr...
MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATüRK
They're passing bills they know the president's going to veto. They're interested in confrontation. ...
MARTIN FROST
You don't really know who you're going to fall in love with at what time in their life. They...
KIRSTEN DUNST
They should go back home and re-create their countries which we have freed from tyranny, whether it ...
DAVID BLUNKETT
In a movie you have all these logistical problems; all these practical problems. But you're also...
JOHN SAYLES
Gore Vidal has been a friend of mine for years, and he's one of the greatest writers in American...
CYBILL SHEPHERD
All I'll say is if you look at countries where it is - where they are rapidly growing, they'...
AUSTAN GOOLSBEE
If you deny people their own voice, you'll have no idea of who they were.
ALICE WALKER
You cannot will yourself to be interested in something you're not interested in. But you can act...
ANGELA DUCKWORTH
If you're conservative in Hollywood, you're on a list of people who need to be put in their ...
ADAM CAROLLA
Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders w...
SENATOR JOHN KERRY
We don't get many people with a casual interest in search. We usually get people who are interested ...
HARRY COLLIER
When it comes right down to it, whatever business you're in, you're in the people business. ...
KAREN SALMANSOHN
ACT and SAT each have their own parts of the country. The GRE has its lock on graduate admissions. A...
ROBERT STERNBERG
In Washington, politicians worry about their 'base.' About polls. About ideology. About rais...
MIKE BARNICLE
The embargo doesn't affect the United States, not even minimally; all of Cuba's economy is s...
JORGE M. PEREZ
It is indeed, ... But to get the oil from the Caspian Sea into the hands of the West you can't use b...
HAROLD PINTER
Most of the people who are in elective office in Washington, D.C., they have held public office befo...
HERMAN CAIN
Are you often struck, when you become sufficiently intimate with other people to know something of t...
C.S. LEWIS
We have witnessed the most educated, successful, and monied professionals in the country put their c...
PREET BHARARA
Passion is different from interest. Those who are just interested in things have the “wish”, but...
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR
Being a grandparent doesn't interest me whatsoever. Babies are all right if they're your own...
ANGELA BOWIE
The method of exposition which philosophers have adopted leads many to suppose that they are simply ...
MORRIS RAPHAEL COHEN
You look at a herd of cattle and well, they all look the same... but they know. They all have an ind...
CHRIS COOPER
I know some people who live this much more insulated life in Los Angeles, where their feet never tou...
ALEC BALDWIN
I think the general anxiety of the 1960s - '70s spawned our interest in the living dead. When pe...
MAX BROOKS
Chief executives, who themselves own few shares of their companies, have no more feeling for the ave...
BOONE PICKENS
I've always thought you have to live life looking forwards, not backwards. I've had no inter...
JEREMY PAXMAN
I'm entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people...
ALICE WALKER
Gas comes from Salt Lake refineries in North Salt Lake. Most oil companies have their own trucks to ...
LARRY RICHARDSON
I think especially in the lives of students, they have so much and they want it all right now. This ...
KRISTY BAKER
What you're seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they...
COLIN POWELL
In my opinion, anyone who says they have no anxiety at all over experiencing their own physical deat...
R. ALAN WOODS
Like most people - unless they're very practised at it or have no warm blood at all in their vei...
VIGGO MORTENSEN
From what we've seen and heard here, the latest trend in migrant smuggling from Cuba is the go-fast ...
CHRIS O'NEIL
No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making thems...
DEAN ACHESON
No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making thems...
DEAN ACHESON
You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the...
CLAIRE TOMALIN
It's weird to have people so interested in your personal life. It's a part of the business t...
ANDY SAMBERG
I don't play Hollywood maids, the hee-hee kind of people who are so in love with their madam'...
ESTHER ROLLE
You have people concerned about inflation picking up, you have higher oil prices, and you have the t...
JEFFREY CHRISTIAN
Most people have never thought through how they're going to allocate their time. You need to mak...
CLAYTON M. CHRISTENSEN
The sexiest people are thinkers. Nobody's interested in somebody who's just vain with a hole...
VIVIENNE WESTWOOD
Students who are interested in learning about the environment should not be dissuaded from doing so,...
GEORGE NETHERCUTT
It's hard to tell with these Internet startups if they're really interested in building comp...
STEVE JOBS
We've reached a very low-level equilibrium where it's not clear whose interest it is in to d...
DAMBISA MOYO
We still have people in the active duty, and if people are feeling ill, if they're experiencing ...
BERNIE SANDERS
People in the country didn't always have all of the newest health-care advances, and they depended o...
MARCIA LEITER
You have parties going on all the time. You have members, when they are thrown in their honor in eff...
FRED WERTHEIMER
I think if you follow anyone home, whether they live in Houston or London, and you sit at their dinn...
BRENE BROWN
I think people are confused about what the Tea Party is. I mean, they were a broad cross-section of ...
JIM DEMINT
Most of the people around me have a vested interest in how much money I make. You know, so a celebri...
DAVE CHAPPELLE
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with ...
DIANE ARBUS
You're going to see a rise of the white male voter who feels like they're not secure, their ...
SEAN DUFFY

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