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One of the most fascinating aspects of politician-watching is trying to determine to what extent any politician believes what he says.

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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Believe
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More quotes by Gore Vidal

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I'd still like to be the President, of course, and I think the best way to do that would be to raise an army and seize the Capital. This strikes me as true democracy.
Gore Vidal
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Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on.
Gore Vidal
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People like to re-invent you, according to cliché. There are a lot of stores about me that really apply only to Capote or Mailer or somebody else. Everything is a mish mash.
Gore Vidal
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I was the first - I was extremely unpopular with the establishment of the United States, particularly the New York Times was always an enemy, and Time magazine, off and on, the enemy, because I said things and took positions that other people didn't do.
Gore Vidal
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Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know I've done it myself.
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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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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Gentlemen are not supposed to tell the truth about their sex lives, nor are ladies, for that matter. Of course Clinton lied - as would anybody in his position.
Gore Vidal
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Age bothers everybody. I was never narcissistic about my looks, but people thought that I should be so therefore I was.
Gore Vidal
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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
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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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I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam - good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system.
Gore Vidal
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In Southern Europe, we have, of course, very bad governments.
Gore Vidal
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The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
Gore Vidal
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I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort.
Gore Vidal
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That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
Gore Vidal
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Always a godfather, never a god.
Gore Vidal
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I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.
Gore Vidal
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To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.
Gore Vidal
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A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.
Gore Vidal