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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

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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
Way
Interest
Sufficient
Compromising
Never
Society
Interests
Loaf
Half
Passionate
Conflicting
Means
Matters
Notorious
Order
Democratic
Outraged
Find
Politician
Improved
Matter
Achieve
Extremes
Mean
Politics
Compromise

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One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.
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Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
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In Southern Europe, we have, of course, very bad governments.
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In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death
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Rome ... at its most decadent, had never thought of hiring an actor to go through the motions of being an emperor while the Praetorian Guard ruled.
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Never have children, only grandchildren.
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Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.
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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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When anyone says to me, 'Can you keep a secret?' I say, 'Why should I, if you can't?'
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Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
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The fool is often oblivious of his own gaucherie.
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A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.
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I said, well, it's a very primitive country, the United States, and it's full of superstitions, which come out of a very fundamental religious bias, which is primitive Christianity.
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I was brought up to believe that what is out-of-doors should stay there and not be encouraged in any way.
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Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the American political elite from the beginning.
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The family in the West is finished... its origin was economic, not biological... the odd group of strangers that make up every family no longer have any reason to live together, to suffer from one another's jagged edges.
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If you want to rise in politics in the United States, there is one subject you must stay away from, and that is politics.
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I have been saying for the some time now that America has only one party - the property party. It's the party of big corporation, the party of money. It has two right wings one is Democrat and the other is Republican.
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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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A writer represents his family history. My grandfather was a senator and my father served in the Roosevelt administration. In other words, I grew up in politics. This is why it seemed perfectly natural to take part in the battles of my time, and to participate in the writing of the history of my country.
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