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To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.

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
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More quotes by Gore Vidal

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These people [Bush Administration] are for the most part rip-off artists. Notice that they're all gas and oil men from Cheney, to the two Bushes I think Rumsfeld also.
Gore Vidal
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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.
Gore Vidal
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The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.
Gore Vidal
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The same people own the media that own the White House that own the Congress that own the oil fields. They all work together to give a false view of the world to the American people.
Gore Vidal
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Little Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to be at war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror, but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means. It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless.
Gore Vidal
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In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people.
Gore Vidal
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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.
Gore Vidal
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The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.
Gore Vidal
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Traitors who prevail are patriots usurpers who succeed are divine emperors.
Gore Vidal
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Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions.
Gore Vidal
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Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
Gore Vidal
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In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.
Gore Vidal
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Since I ought to be arrogant, impressed with my social position, overwhelmed by my beauty, therefore I am. Actually I was never my own type so I completely missed my beauty all through my youth. I have no social position and I stay away from what is known as society as much as possible. But people like to re-invent you, according to cliché.
Gore Vidal
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Next to I win, I told you so are the sweetest words.
Gore Vidal
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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.
Gore Vidal
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A good deed never goes unpunished.
Gore Vidal
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Nixon was a Southern Rim President, and so antipathetic to the old guard.
Gore Vidal
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Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
Gore Vidal
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That peculiarly American religion, President-worship.
Gore Vidal
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The fool is often oblivious of his own gaucherie.
Gore Vidal