Quote

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.

Gore Vidal

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Become
Burden
Colossus
Long
Leader
Kindly
Men
Turn
Feared
World
Takes
Asia
Race
Yellow
Turns
Treat
Hope
Treats
White
Treated
Asiatic

More quotes by Gore Vidal

Image
The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true. Since I ought to be arrogant, impressed with my social position, overwhelmed by my beauty, therefore I am.
Gore Vidal
Image
American laws don't work, but at least the laws of physics might work.
Gore Vidal
Image
Since no one can ever know for certain whether or not his own view of life is the correct one, it is absolutely impossible for him to know if someone else's is the wrong one.
Gore Vidal
Image
Sex is a continuum. You go through different phases along life's way... and if you don't, you've been sort of cheated.
Gore Vidal
Image
Always a godfather, never a god.
Gore Vidal
Image
I have never been particularly impressed by the self centered musings of my fellow writers.
Gore Vidal
Image
Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word democracy.
Gore Vidal
Image
A huge number of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. You have a people that don't know anything about the rest of the world, and you have leaders who lie to them, lie to them, and lie to them.
Gore Vidal
Image
Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the American political elite from the beginning.
Gore Vidal
Image
If satire is to be effective, the audience must be aware of the thing satirized.
Gore Vidal
Image
Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.
Gore Vidal
Image
The problem with most Americans is that they don't like any question that takes more than ten seconds to answer.
Gore Vidal
Image
Ideally, the writer needs no audience other than the few who understand that it is immodest and greedy to want more.
Gore Vidal
Image
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
Gore Vidal
Image
Obviously I'm in favor of protecting the rights of everybody: gay, black, women, what have you, American Indians.
Gore Vidal
Image
Sex was a great no-no for Americans, so that was obviously an attraction to the writers, and since sex is a great part of most people's lives, it's a great subject.
Gore Vidal
Image
Everybody has two legs, two lobes to the brain which is why we tend to be interested in symmetry, always balancing things.
Gore Vidal
Image
Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on.
Gore Vidal
Image
I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place
Gore Vidal
Image
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.
Gore Vidal