Quote

The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn't be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans in the New World, of course, they could and did.

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
Mother
Allowed
Others
England
Become
Couldn
America
Courses
Country
Course
World
Religion
Force
Puritans
Left
Puritan

More quotes by Gore Vidal

Image
Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.
Gore Vidal
Image
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?
Gore Vidal
Image
The Gores, I think, are a bit brighter than the Bushes, historically speaking.
Gore Vidal
Image
Traitors who prevail are patriots usurpers who succeed are divine emperors.
Gore Vidal
Image
I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir (I am not my own subject, I used to say with icy superiority).
Gore Vidal
Image
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
Gore Vidal
Image
Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it's gossip with some point to it. That's why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.
Gore Vidal
Image
Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
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
What is a political party but a conspiracy?
Gore Vidal
Image
To bring into the world an unwanted human being is as antisocial an act as murder.
Gore Vidal
Image
Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.
Gore Vidal
Image
The unfed mind devours itself.
Gore Vidal
Image
I think we're going to have to accept the fact the U.S. is off the world map. We are not a great player any longer. And when we come home - as we will have to do because we've run out of money - we will discover that Argentine debts means Argentine politics. And on that note, you can wake up in the middle of the night.
Gore Vidal
Image
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Gore Vidal
Image
I believe there's something very salutary in, say, beating up a gay-bashing policeman. Preferably one fights through the courts, through the laws, through education, but if at a neighborhood level violence is necessary, I'm all for violence. It's the only thing Americans understand.
Gore Vidal
Image
I have never been particularly impressed by the self centered musings of my fellow writers.
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
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
Gore Vidal
Image
The worst thing to happen to Lincoln - aside from the unfortunate incident at Ford's theatre - was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.
Gore Vidal