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What is there to say, finally, except that pain is bad and pleasure good, life all, death nothing.
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
Finally
Except
Pleasure
Pain
Death
Nothing
Good
Life
More quotes by Gore Vidal
It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time—now, too, I suppose—actually thought that at a given moment in history two human beings had evolved to a higher state than that of all the gods that ever were or ever will be. This is titanism, as the Greeks would say. This is madness.
Gore Vidal
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Gore Vidal
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
Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
Gore Vidal
The fool is often oblivious of his own gaucherie.
Gore Vidal
World events are the work of individuals whose motives are often frivolous, even casual.
Gore Vidal
I don't see us winning the war. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims.
Gore Vidal
Terrorism is a metaphor, it's an abstract noun. It's like having a war on dandruff. It's something from advertising, it's meaningless.
Gore Vidal
From the age of 1 to 6 there is a small percentage that is exclusively homosexual, a small percentage heterosexual and there's a wide band in the middle of people who respond to various stimuli. A little bit here, a little more there.
Gore Vidal
The same people own the media that own the White House that own the Congress that own the oil fields. They all work together to give a false view of the world to the American people.
Gore Vidal
USA is suffering between imperialists and anti-imperialists. That is the situation. The most powerful country in the world is on its way back to the Stone Age.
Gore Vidal
When anyone says to me, 'Can you keep a secret?' I say, 'Why should I, if you can't?'
Gore Vidal
[ New York ] is a place that worships incompetence particularly if it's combined with energy and paranoid self-confidence. Only in a city like New York could Truman Capote have made it, or John Simon.
Gore Vidal
People have forgotten the effects of prohibition. We have become the United Statesof Amnesia.
Gore Vidal
The British are absolutely hung up on class, and whenever they start to really - class for the English is like sex for Americans: They start to shake all over when the subject comes up.
Gore Vidal
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
Gore Vidal
The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge.
Gore Vidal
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Gore Vidal
It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.
Gore Vidal
People are worse educated than they used to be. Certainly they are not very interested in reading books, as opposed to watching television, movies. They are used to getting things through the eye and the ear. In a small way, literature goes on being written, but few people like it. Once it's bureaucratized by the schoolteachers, the game's up.
Gore Vidal
