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The problem with most Americans is that they don't like any question that takes more than ten seconds to answer.
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
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Ten
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Americans
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More quotes by Gore Vidal
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
Gore Vidal
I'd still like to be the President, of course, and I think the best way to do that would be to raise an army and seize the Capital. This strikes me as true democracy.
Gore Vidal
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
In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.
Gore Vidal
I have never been particularly impressed by the self centered musings of my fellow writers.
Gore Vidal
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
The first TV babies are now writing with a TV mind that has no attention span at all.
Gore Vidal
I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.
Gore Vidal
To bring into the world an unwanted human being is as antisocial an act as murder.
Gore Vidal
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
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
True wisdom is to know the extent of what you don't know quite as well as you know what you do know.
Gore Vidal
In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.
Gore Vidal
To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.
Gore Vidal
I'd like to see a revival of state legislatures, in which I am a true Jeffersonian.
Gore Vidal
I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
I write in the morning at a table, longhand on yellow legal pads, just like Nixon, when I’m doing fiction.
Gore Vidal
Envy is the central fact of American life.
Gore Vidal
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
