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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
Understood
Came
Class
Reformers
Ever
Ruling
Always
Reform
People
Turned
Bottom
Worked
More quotes by Gore Vidal
I'm not for real revolutions, because they always bring you the opposite of what you want. You very seldom get what you want if you have a violent revolution.
Gore Vidal
I look into my own black heart.
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Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
Gore Vidal
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
Gore Vidal
A huge number of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. You have a people that don't know anything about the rest of the world, and you have leaders who lie to them, lie to them, and lie to them.
Gore Vidal
They are longing for a war with Iran. Iran is no more a harm to us than was Iraq or Afghanistan. They invented an enemy, they tell lies, lies, lies. The New York Times goes along with their lies, lies, lies. And they don't stop. When the public that's lied to 30 times a day it's apt to believe the lies, is not it?
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
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
Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
Gore Vidal
We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.
Gore Vidal
Instead of finding alternative energy sources, we try to subjugate entire regions of the world. People do not understand that by doing this, the United States are going to absolute ruin.
Gore Vidal
A writer represents his family history. My grandfather was a senator and my father served in the Roosevelt administration. In other words, I grew up in politics. This is why it seemed perfectly natural to take part in the battles of my time, and to participate in the writing of the history of my country.
Gore Vidal
I have no television to go on so I get a lot of writing done. That's my substitute for television.
Gore Vidal
In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death
Gore Vidal
Age bothers everybody. I was never narcissistic about my looks, but people thought that I should be so therefore I was.
Gore Vidal
Nixon was a Southern Rim President, and so antipathetic to the old guard.
Gore Vidal
Never offend an enemy in a small way.
Gore Vidal
Obviously I'm in favor of protecting the rights of everybody: gay, black, women, what have you, American Indians.
Gore Vidal
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?
Gore Vidal
...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
