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It never occurred to any Enlightenment figure in the eighteenth century that law was not preferable to man.

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
Men
Preferable
Occurred
Enlightenment
Figure
Figures
Century
Law
Never
Eighteenth

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That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
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Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know I've done it myself.
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The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
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To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
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Since no one can ever know for certain whether or not his own view of life is the correct one, it is absolutely impossible for him to know if someone else's is the wrong one.
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I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality.
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Writing of history is our only heuristic principle. The Germans have a word for it, einfühlen. It is the ability to experience the past in the present and to recreate it. In my books, I have tried to recreate it in the most natural way possible: History must be integrated into the story without the weight of premonition.
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Ideally, the writer needs no audience other than the few who understand that it is immodest and greedy to want more.
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Terrorism is a metaphor, it's an abstract noun. It's like having a war on dandruff. It's something from advertising, it's meaningless.
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The word 'radical' derives from the Latin word for root. Therefore, if you want to get to the root of anything you must be radical. It is no accident that the word has now been totally demonized.
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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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As one gets older, litigation replaces sex.
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In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.
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Poor John Simon - what a nightmare, to wake up in the morning and realize that you are John Simon.
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What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?
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Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word democracy.
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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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People have forgotten the effects of prohibition. We have become the United Statesof Amnesia.
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