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For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
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
Else
Average
Speech
Simply
Saying
Liberty
Libertarianism
American
Repeat
Freedom
Repeats
Everyone
Libertarian
More quotes by Gore Vidal
Yet in a society of conflicting interests the only democratic way in which matters can be improved is through politics, and politics means the compromising of extremes in order to achieve that notorious half loaf which the passionate and the outraged never find sufficient.
Gore Vidal
Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.
Gore Vidal
The Gores, I think, are a bit brighter than the Bushes, historically speaking.
Gore Vidal
It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
Gore Vidal
Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know I've done it myself.
Gore Vidal
I'm in Hollywood right now, surrounded by nothing but the sons and grandsons of movie stars.
Gore Vidal
Freud did some serious damage to American literature - a lot of writers began therapy in the 1940s, after which they all became terribly egocentric.
Gore Vidal
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
Gore Vidal
Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
Gore Vidal
Having no talent is no longer enough.
Gore Vidal
I'm a much worse guest than I am a host, and I'm not an awfully good host either. I really like being alone.
Gore Vidal
In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death
Gore Vidal
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
The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since.
Gore Vidal
What is there to say, finally, except that pain is bad and pleasure good, life all, death nothing.
Gore Vidal
I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that's how one starts. Or I started.
Gore Vidal
When anyone says to me, 'Can you keep a secret?' I say, 'Why should I, if you can't?'
Gore Vidal
The true confessors have been aware that not only is life mostly failure, but that in one's failure or pettiness or wrongness exists the living drama of the self.
Gore Vidal
The New York Times is the worst in that hardly anybody can write English over there. Most of it reads like slight translations from the German.
Gore Vidal
To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
Gore Vidal
