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No reform ever came from the bottom, and it was always people who understood how the ruling class worked who turned out to be the reformers.

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
Bottom
Worked
Understood
Came
Class
Reformers
Ever
Ruling
Always
Reform
People
Turned

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To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
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Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.
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If satire is to be effective, the audience must be aware of the thing satirized.
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For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
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I'd like to see a revival of state legislatures, in which I am a true Jeffersonian.
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The worst thing to happen to Lincoln - aside from the unfortunate incident at Ford's theatre - was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.
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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.
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The true confessors have been aware that not only is life mostly failure, but that in one's failure or pettiness or wrongness exists the living drama of the self.
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Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.
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Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
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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.
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Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.
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I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.
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Sex is a continuum. You go through different phases along life's way... and if you don't, you've been sort of cheated.
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I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.
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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.
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