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Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.

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
Ever
Surprised
Make
Immediately
Never
Killed
Would
Expect
Thinking
Hero
Like
Aren
People
Mistake
Behaviour
Looking
Heroes

More quotes by Gore Vidal

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What begins with comedy ends with comedy... in my short view of the matter.
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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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There is no such thing as a true account of anything.
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It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made.
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The true confessors have been aware that not only is life mostly failure, but that in one's failure or pettiness or wrongness exists the living drama of the self.
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My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general (They tell lies, he used to say with wonder, even when they don't have to).
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Come to me and show me a small cancer and I'll tell you you've got a small cancer that should be cut out. That's realism but in America it's called cynicism.
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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.
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Americans are not only a less homogenous population than we were when we were 3 million ex-colonists, but we're less educated. On top of that, we have constant misinformation and manipulation by media.
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People are worse educated than they used to be. Certainly they are not very interested in reading books, as opposed to watching television, movies. They are used to getting things through the eye and the ear. In a small way, literature goes on being written, but few people like it. Once it's bureaucratized by the schoolteachers, the game's up.
Gore Vidal
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I was never my own type so I completely missed my beauty all through my youth.
Gore Vidal
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a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a journalist)
Gore Vidal
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To bring into the world an unwanted human being is as antisocial an act as murder.
Gore Vidal
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I'm a true reactionary. Like all patricians, I'd like to restore the original republic, which we lost 40 years ago when Harry Truman imposed the national security state on us, which has kept us at war, hot or cold, for almost half a century, and it's got us $4 trillion into debt.
Gore Vidal
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Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.
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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You know, I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country.
Gore Vidal
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France is a nation devoted to the false hypothesis on which it then builds marvelously logical structures.
Gore Vidal
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If you're a critic of the rulers of the United States, you are either demonized, or you are trivialized by the press, and they do a very good job of making you into a non-person or a ridiculous person.
Gore Vidal
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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.
Gore Vidal