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On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.

Gore Vidal

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Gore Vidal
Age: 86 †
Born: 1925
Born: October 3
Died: 2012
Died: July 31
Actor
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Playwright
Politician
Prosaist
West Point
New York
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Gor Vidal
Cameron Kay
Eugene Luther Vidal
Edgar Box
Katherine Everard
Eugene Vidal
American
September
United
Commerce
Become
Empires
States
Department
Died
Debtor
Nation
Debtors
Literature
Announced
Nations
Empire

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True wisdom is to know the extent of what you don't know quite as well as you know what you do know.
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A good deed never goes unpunished.
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They are longing for a war with Iran. Iran is no more a harm to us than was Iraq or Afghanistan. They invented an enemy, they tell lies, lies, lies. The New York Times goes along with their lies, lies, lies. And they don't stop. When the public that's lied to 30 times a day it's apt to believe the lies, is not it?
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Everything's wrong on Wikipedia.
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People like to re-invent you, according to cliché. There are a lot of stores about me that really apply only to Capote or Mailer or somebody else. Everything is a mish mash.
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Everybody has two legs, two lobes to the brain which is why we tend to be interested in symmetry, always balancing things.
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For true happiness, it is not enough to be successful oneself . . . one's friends must fail.
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What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.
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Realism has always been called cynicism.
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USA is suffering between imperialists and anti-imperialists. That is the situation. The most powerful country in the world is on its way back to the Stone Age.
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I don't seem to be cynical to myself but how what I say goes down with others is their problem. I'm realistic.
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[ New York ] is a place that worships incompetence particularly if it's combined with energy and paranoid self-confidence. Only in a city like New York could Truman Capote have made it, or John Simon.
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It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made.
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That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
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France is a nation devoted to the false hypothesis on which it then builds marvelously logical structures.
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To bring into the world an unwanted human being is as antisocial an act as murder.
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I do not much care for nature, and believe that flowers belong in vases rather than loose and untidy on the ground.
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Never have children, only grandchildren.
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What is a political party but a conspiracy?
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It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
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