Quote

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

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
Show
Tell
Shows
Realism
America
Cynicism
Come
Cancer
Cutting
Called
Small

More quotes by Gore Vidal

Image
Nixon was a Southern Rim President, and so antipathetic to the old guard.
Gore Vidal
Image
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
Image
I suppose my liking for Italy is partly atavism, my family are of the old Roman stock. They came from the Alps north of Venice.
Gore Vidal
Image
Gentlemen are not supposed to tell the truth about their sex lives, nor are ladies, for that matter. Of course Clinton lied - as would anybody in his position.
Gore Vidal
Image
I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir (I am not my own subject, I used to say with icy superiority).
Gore Vidal
Image
...you will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new order imposed by enthusiasts.
Gore Vidal
Image
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
Gore Vidal
Image
I believe there's something very salutary in, say, beating up a gay-bashing policeman. Preferably one fights through the courts, through the laws, through education, but if at a neighborhood level violence is necessary, I'm all for violence. It's the only thing Americans understand.
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
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
I'm in favor of any form of sexual relationship that gives pleasure to those involved. And I have never heard a convincing argument to the contrary.
Gore Vidal
Image
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.
Gore Vidal
Image
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.
Gore Vidal
Image
Freud did some serious damage to American literature - a lot of writers began therapy in the 1940s, after which they all became terribly egocentric.
Gore Vidal
Image
By 1948, the Italians had begun to pull themselves together, demonstrating once more their astonishing ability to cope with disaster which is so perfectly balanced by their absolute inability to deal with success
Gore Vidal
Image
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.
Gore Vidal
Image
What we are is seldom what we want to be, while what we want to be is either denied us or changes with the seasons.
Gore Vidal
Image
Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions.
Gore Vidal
Image
World events are the work of individuals whose motives are often frivolous, even casual.
Gore Vidal
Image
Age bothers everybody. I was never narcissistic about my looks, but people thought that I should be so therefore I was.
Gore Vidal