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When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States by owning the media, you can make the masses believe almost anything you want, and guide them as you please.

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
Make
Control
Controls
Opinion
Masses
Almost
Guide
United
Guides
America
Corporate
States
Mass
Anything
Please
Believe
Media
Owning

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To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.
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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.
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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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Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
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There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, Well, so-and-so will like this, which you do when you're younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.
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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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Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.
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In large Victorian houses with many rooms and heavy doors, the occupants could be mysterious and exciting to one another in a way that those who live in rackety developments can never hope to be. Not even the lust of a Lord Byron could survive the fact of Levittown.
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For true happiness, it is not enough to be successful oneself . . . one's friends must fail.
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Then die. We must all do that. But die, as they say, game.
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Celebrities are invariably celebrity-mad, just as liars always believe liars.
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Little Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to be at war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror, but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means. It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless.
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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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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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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.
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I think we're going to have to accept the fact the U.S. is off the world map. We are not a great player any longer. And when we come home - as we will have to do because we've run out of money - we will discover that Argentine debts means Argentine politics. And on that note, you can wake up in the middle of the night.
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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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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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Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.
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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.
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