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

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Our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own.
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We affect one another quite enough merely by existing. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets? fragments pass briefly from one orbit to another. On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, neither losing more than a particle to the other, in passing.
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Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
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Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art.
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The Gores, I think, are a bit brighter than the Bushes, historically speaking.
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Where there is no desire or pursuits, there is no wholeness. But there are satisfying lesser states, fragments.
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It is not enough merely to win others must lose.
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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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a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a journalist)
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Everybody is bisexual, and that is a fact of human nature. Some people practice both, and some practice one thing, and some people practice another thing and that is the way human beings are.
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I'd like to see a revival of state legislatures, in which I am a true Jeffersonian.
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Now the long-feared Asiatic colossus takes its turn as world leader, and we--the white race--have become the yellow man's burden.Let us hope that he will treat us more kindly than we treated him.
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Vitriolic really is personal. I am vitriolic. I am savage.
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To bring into the world an unwanted human being is as antisocial an act as murder.
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The hatred Americans have for their own government is pathological, if understandable. At one level it is simply thwarted greed: since our religion is making a buck, giving a part of that buck to any government is an act against nature.
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As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
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If you're not part of that club, as I certainly am not, you are not presidential.
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I do not much care for nature, and believe that flowers belong in vases rather than loose and untidy on the ground.
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It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
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