Gore Vidal quote: "They say that to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is fully calculable; even to ourselves we are strange."

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.
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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.
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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...
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That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness...
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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.
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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...
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The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
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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...
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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.
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If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives ...
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Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But the...
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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...
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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...
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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

They say that to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is fully calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.

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Gore Vidal

They say that to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is fully calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.

Gore Vidal

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