Quote

I don't seem to be cynical to myself but how what I say goes down with others is their problem. I'm realistic.

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
Seems
Problem
Cynical
Realistic
Seem
Goes
Others

More quotes by Gore Vidal

Image
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
Image
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.
Gore Vidal
Image
Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.
Gore Vidal
Image
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
Gore Vidal
Image
Having no talent is no longer enough.
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
Image
What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.
Gore Vidal
Image
In matters of faith, inconvenient evidence is always suppressed while contradictions go unnoticed.
Gore Vidal
Image
It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.
Gore Vidal
Image
The Gores, I think, are a bit brighter than the Bushes, historically speaking.
Gore Vidal
Image
The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge.
Gore Vidal
Image
Nothing human is finally calculable even to ourselves we are strange.
Gore Vidal
Image
Nixon was a Southern Rim President, and so antipathetic to the old guard.
Gore Vidal
Image
I said, well, it's a very primitive country, the United States, and it's full of superstitions, which come out of a very fundamental religious bias, which is primitive Christianity.
Gore Vidal
Image
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.
Gore Vidal
Image
Next to I win, I told you so are the sweetest words.
Gore Vidal
Image
I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam - good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system.
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
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
Image
I have no television to go on so I get a lot of writing done. That's my substitute for television.
Gore Vidal