Quote

Liberal comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon.

Gore Vidal

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Political
Liberal
Change
Reform
Mean
Democracy
Men
Politics
Pertaining
Word
Lexicon
Free
Erased
Means
Extend
Comes
Latin

More quotes by Gore Vidal

Image
To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.
Gore Vidal
Image
Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art.
Gore Vidal
Image
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
Gore Vidal
Image
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?
Gore Vidal
Image
It never occurred to any Enlightenment figure in the eighteenth century that law was not preferable to man.
Gore Vidal
Image
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
Gore Vidal
Image
True wisdom is to know the extent of what you don't know quite as well as you know what you do know.
Gore Vidal
Image
Never offend an enemy in a small way.
Gore Vidal
Image
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
Gore Vidal
Image
Realism has always been called cynicism.
Gore Vidal
Image
Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.
Gore Vidal
Image
Everybody has two legs, two lobes to the brain which is why we tend to be interested in symmetry, always balancing things.
Gore Vidal
Image
When anyone says to me, 'Can you keep a secret?' I say, 'Why should I, if you can't?'
Gore Vidal
Image
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
Gore Vidal
Image
Baum (Writer of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ) was a true educator, and those who read his Oz books are often made what they were not-imaginative , tolerant, alert to wonders, life.
Gore Vidal
Image
Age bothers everybody. I was never narcissistic about my looks, but people thought that I should be so therefore I was.
Gore Vidal
Image
I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that's the most important thing there is for middle-class people.
Gore Vidal
Image
Sex is a continuum. You go through different phases along life's way... and if you don't, you've been sort of cheated.
Gore Vidal
Image
We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic.
Gore Vidal
Image
Always a godfather, never a god.
Gore Vidal