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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.

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
Called
Small
Show
Tell
Shows
Realism
America
Cynicism
Come
Cancer
Cutting

More quotes by Gore Vidal

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We have been at war almost constantly since the last century. And it has not helped our institutions. Congress no longer represents the people. The courts do not practice justice any more. The armies never stop playing at being the policemen of the world and of oil.
Gore Vidal
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The brain that doesn't feed itself, eats itself.
Gore Vidal
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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
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Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all.
Gore Vidal
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The hatred Americans have for their own government is pathological, if understandable. At one level it is simply thwarted greed: since our religion is making a buck, giving a part of that buck to any government is an act against nature.
Gore Vidal
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Most lives are spent putting on and taking off masks.
Gore Vidal
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Liberal comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon.
Gore Vidal
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That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
Gore Vidal
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The Gores, I think, are a bit brighter than the Bushes, historically speaking.
Gore Vidal
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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
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Who gives a damn about being remembered? That's really for amateurs.
Gore Vidal
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Presidents have absolutely gone against the will of Congress. Congress hasn't declared a war since December 7, 1941, and yet we've been at war ever since with somebody or other in order to justify the war machine. Now we have alienated almost the entire earth
Gore Vidal
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It never occurred to any Enlightenment figure in the eighteenth century that law was not preferable to man.
Gore Vidal
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The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn't be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans in the New World, of course, they could and did.
Gore Vidal
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My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general (They tell lies, he used to say with wonder, even when they don't have to).
Gore Vidal
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Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.
Gore Vidal
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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.
Gore Vidal
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I'd like to see a revival of state legislatures, in which I am a true Jeffersonian.
Gore Vidal
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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
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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