Gore Vidal Quotes & Sayings

In Southern Europe, we have, of course, very bad governments. — Gore Vidal

It is curious how little interested we are in the sexual desires of those who do not attract us. — Gore Vidal

In character, as it were, the writer settles for an impression of what happened rather than creating the sense of the thing happening. — Gore Vidal

Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect! — Gore Vidal

I look into my own black heart. — Gore Vidal

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem. — Gore Vidal

I do not admire 'the people,' as such. No one really does. Their folk wisdom is usually false, their instincts predatory. Even their sense of survival - so highly developed in the individual - goes berserk in the mass. A crowd is a fool. — Gore Vidal

Laughing at someone else is an excellent way of learning how to laugh at oneself; and questioning what seem to be the absurd beliefs of another group is a good way of recognizing the potential absurdity of many of one's own cherished beliefs. — Gore Vidal

I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess. Clad only in garter belt and one dress shield, I held off the entire elite of the Trobriand Islanders, a race who possess no words for "why" or "because." Wielding a stone axe, I broke the arms, the limbs, the balls of their finest warriors, my beauty blinding them, as it does all men, unmanning them in the way that King Kong was reduced to mere simian whimper by beauteous Fay Wray whom I resemble left three-quarter profile if the key light is no more than five feet high during the close shot. — Gore Vidal

It never occurred to any Enlightenment figure in the eighteenth century that law was not preferable to man. — Gore Vidal

Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around. — Gore Vidal

The individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining. — Gore Vidal

I am a novelist turned temporary adventurer, and I chose to write television, movies and plays for much the same reason that Henry Morgan selected the Spanish Main for his peculiar - and not dissimilar - sphere of operations. — Gore Vidal

Remember, I'm West Point, where I was born. My father went there. — Gore Vidal

Universities are filled with poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and those others who (through what seems to be have been discretion) made it. — 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

Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions ... — Gore Vidal

Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil. — Gore Vidal

I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased behaving like Nazis, no comparison would come to mind. — Gore Vidal

Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery. — Gore Vidal

I was like everyone else when Obama was elected - optimistic. — 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

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself. — Gore Vidal

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half. — Gore Vidal

I've yet to read a memoir by anyone I've known at all well that came anywhere near to the truth. — Gore Vidal

It doesn't actually make any difference whether the President is Republican or Democrat. The genius of the American ruling class is that it has been able to make the people think that they have had something to do with the electing of presidents for 200 years when they've had absolutely nothing to say about the candidates or the policies or the way the country is run. — Gore Vidal

You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It's just grotesque. — Gore Vidal

To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds. — Gore Vidal

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself. — Gore Vidal

Love it or loathe it, you can never leave it or lose it. — Gore Vidal

The Russian governors are terrified of ideas. If only they knew what our governors know - that in a massive egalitarian society no idea which runs counter to the prevailing superstitions can successfully penetrate the official carapace. — Gore Vidal

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die. — Gore Vidal

I do not much care for nature, and believe that flowers belong in vases rather than loose and untidy on the ground. — Gore Vidal

Most children tell themselves stories in which they figure as powerful figures, enjoying the pleasures not only of the adult world as they conceive it but of a world of wonders unlike dull reality. — Gore Vidal

Like the rest of us, Constantius was many men in the body of one. — Gore Vidal

I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority). — Gore Vidal

I could be a lot happier. I could be the senator from Aerospace taking bribes, and be quite happy. — Gore Vidal

I would not be surprised if elephants are more intelligent than human beings. After all, their heads are larger than ours, and the fact that they do not speak might well be an indication of superiority. — Gore Vidal

I was taught to read by my grandmother. Central to her method was a tale of unnatural love called 'The Duck and the Kangaroo'. Then, because my grandfather, Senator Gore, was blind, I was required early on to read grown-up books to him, mostly constitutional law and, of course, the Congressional Record. The later continence of my style is a miracle, considering those years of piping the additional remarks of Mr. Borah of Idaho. — Gore Vidal

How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It's the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It's been two hundred years at it. It's superb. — Gore Vidal

After acquiring Texas, Polk deliberately started a war with Mexico because, as he later told the historian George Bancroft, we had to acquire California. Thanks to Polk, we did. — Gore Vidal

I was brought up to believe that what is out-of-doors should stay there and not be encouraged in any way. — Gore Vidal

In 1970, I wrote in the New York Times, of all uncongenial places, It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect - good or bad - the drug will have on the taker. This will require heroic honesty. Don't say that marijuana is addictive or dangerous when it is neither, as millions of people know - unlike "speed," which kills most unpleasantly, or heroin, which can be addictive and difficult to kick. Along with exhortation and warning, it might be good for our citizens to recall (or learn for the first time) that the United States was the creation of men who believed that each person has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbors' pursuit of happiness (that his neighbor's idea of happiness is persecuting others does confuse matters a bit). — Gore Vidal

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships. — Gore Vidal

The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. — 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

To hear two American men congratulating each other on being heterosexual is one of the most chilling experiences - and unique to the United States. You don't hear two Italians sitting around complimenting each other because they actually like to go to bed with women. The American is hysterical about his manhood. — Gore Vidal

Many years ago, there used to be something called 'conflict of interest.' No longer, I'm afraid. Today, we all bathe in the same river. — Gore Vidal

After the French Revolution, the world money power shifted from Paris to London. For three generations, the British maintained an old-fashioned colonial empire, as well as a modern empire based on London's primacy in the money markets. — Gore Vidal

Style ... is knowing who you are ... — Gore Vidal

When anyone says to me, 'Can you keep a secret?' I say, 'Why should I, if you can't?' — 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

This separation was absolute in our original Republic. But the sky-godders do not give up easily. In the 1950s they actually got the phrase In God We Trust onto the currency, in direct violation of the First Amendment. — Gore Vidal

'Politics' is made up of two words, 'poli,' which is Greek for 'many,' and 'tics,' which are blood-sucking insects. — Gore Vidal

Which other major religion is based on the Godhead incarnate being whipped, tacked to a cross, stabbed? Only the Marquis de Sade could have made up a sicker religion. It's no wonder that those brought up in such a culture hate life and enjoy inflicting pain. All societies are sick but some are sicker than others. Christian societies are certainly the sickest. — Gore Vidal

McCain is significant in the sense that he has no significance at all on any subject. — Gore Vidal

I like the distance that Europe gives me. Also if I stayed in America I'd be a full-time politician and have no time for writing, which is why I went to Europe to live in 1961. — Gore Vidal

It is reasonable to assume that, by and large, what is not read now will not be read, ever. It is also reasonable to assume that practically nothing that is read now will be read later. — Gore Vidal

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies. — Gore Vidal

I went to Europe to live in 1961. I'd never have written Julian if it hadn't been for the sequestered life that I led in Rome and the classical library at the America Academy. — Gore Vidal

Europe began as the relatively empty, uncivilized Wild West of Asia; then the Western Hemisphere became the Wild West of Europe. Now the sun has set in our West and risen once more in the East. — Gore Vidal

In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative. — Gore Vidal

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice. — Gore Vidal

No, not death. We have chosen life eternal, the resurrection of the ... '
'That is a story to tell children. The truth is that for thousands of years we looked to what was living. Now you look to what is dead, you worship a dead man and tell one another that this world is not for us, while the next is all that matters. Only there is no next world. — Gore Vidal

Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at the galaxy's edge ... there is all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. No thing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all. — Gore Vidal

The media can't get anything straight. — Gore Vidal

Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60. — Gore Vidal

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return. — Gore Vidal

I'm no longer the scales most lovers are, weighing the deeds and gifts and treasures proffered against those received or stolen from the other, trying always to bring into fatal balance two separate things. — Gore Vidal

At a certain age, you have to live near good medical care - if, that is, you're going to continue. You always have the option of not continuing, which, I fear, is sometimes nobler. — Gore Vidal

But then we are old and have been to the wars and value our fast-diminishing freedoms unlike those jingoes now beating their tom-toms in Times Square in favor of all-out war for other Americans to fight. — Gore Vidal

First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me. — Gore Vidal

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

Christianity is such a silly religion. — Gore Vidal

The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country - and we haven't seen them since. — Gore Vidal

As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg's six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln. — Gore Vidal

Like most readers, I tend to skip the acknowledgements at the beginnings of books: the 'To-My-Wife-Without-Whose-Invaluable-Assistance' kind of thing. — Gore Vidal

The fool is often oblivious of his own gaucherie. — Gore Vidal

Since the reading skills of the American people are the lowest in the First World, the general public is always easy prey to manipulation by television. — Gore Vidal

Wilson was very much school of Montaigne. Like Montaigne, he was not exactly misogynistic but he felt that the challenge of another male mind was the highest sort of human exchange while possession of a beautiful woman was also of intense importance to him. — Gore Vidal

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

All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world. — Gore Vidal

I think the Chinese will say the hell with you and pull their money out of the United States. That's the end of our wars. — Gore Vidal

Writers who teach tend to prefer literary theory to literature and tenure to all else. Writers who do not teach prefer the contemplation of Careers to art of any kind. — Gore Vidal

Yet in a society of conflicting interests the only democratic way in which matters can be improved is through politics, and politics means the compromising of extremes in order to achieve that notorious half loaf which the passionate and the outraged never find sufficient. — Gore Vidal

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

Eisenhower's career demonstrated how it is possible to fool all the people all the time ... 'I may be stupid,' he once said at a press conference, 'but at least I'm sincere!' Actually, he was neither, but it suited his purpose to play the part of the bumbling man of good will who was 'not an expert in these matters' but somehow would do his best. — Gore Vidal

So here they are, trying to get us into the army again to get us to fight in Europe, but the country is isolationist. One of the reasons why the world has been demonized is because they had to do it. The average American is an isolationist. — Gore Vidal

A nation not of men but of laws, intoned John Adams as he, among other lawyers, launched what has easily become the most demented society ever consciously devised by intelligent men. We are now enslaves by laws. We are governed by lawyers. We create little but litigate much. Our monuments are the ever-expanding prisons, where millions languish for having committed victimless crimes or for simply not playing the game of plausible deniability (aka lying) with a sufficiently good legal team. What began as a sort of Restoration comedy, The Impeachment of a President, on a frivolous, irrelevant matter, is suddenly turning very black indeed, and all our political arrangements are at risk as superstitious Christian fundamentalists and their corporate manipulators seem intent on overthrowing two presidential elections in a Senate trial. This is no longer comedy. This is usurpation. — Gore Vidal

There's no such thing as a war against terrorism. It's idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed. — Gore Vidal

You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have. — Gore Vidal

Our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own. — Gore Vidal

The best novelist of my generation is an Italian living in Paris, still working and improving - Italo Calvino. — Gore Vidal

Women are put on earth only to provide men with sons. — Gore Vidal

Populists have never had a good press in Freedom's land. — Gore Vidal

Heroes must see to their own fame. No one else will. — Gore Vidal

From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out ... It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion. — Gore Vidal

I think we're going to have to accept the fact the U.S. is off the world map. We are not a great player any longer. And when we come home - as we will have to do because we've run out of money - we will discover that Argentine debts means Argentine politics. And on that note, you can wake up in the middle of the night. — 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

I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality. — Gore Vidal