Quote

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.

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
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Present
Premonition
Stories
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Recreate
Past
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Natural
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More quotes by Gore Vidal

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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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Never have varmints, only grandvarmints.
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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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I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
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You hear all this whining going on, Where are our great writers? The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?
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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.
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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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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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Although the notion of one god may give comfort to those in need of a daddy, it reminds the rest of us that the totalitarian society is grounded upon the concept of God the father. One paternal god, one paternal leader. Authority is absolute.
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You can only have a war with another country. You can't have a war with bad temper or a war against paranoids.
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I'm not for real revolutions, because they always bring you the opposite of what you want. You very seldom get what you want if you have a violent revolution.
Gore Vidal
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The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge.
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A good deed never goes unpunished.
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Many people in the United States happen to believe that United States policy is wrong in Vietnam and the Vietcong are correct in wanting to organize their country in their own way politically. This happens to be pretty much the opinion of western Europe and the other parts of the world.
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Everybody has two legs, two lobes to the brain which is why we tend to be interested in symmetry, always balancing things.
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I spend most of my time in California. I feel I am fueled by rage and by the political climate there. I am angry most of the time when I am there, which might be unbearable for someone else, but for me it's fuel for my writing.
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The Gores, I think, are a bit brighter than the Bushes, historically speaking.
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In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people.
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All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
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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