Vidal Gore Quotes & Sayings

In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people. — Gore Vidal

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. — Gore Vidal

Most of our writers tend to be recorders. — Gore Vidal

Everybody has two legs, two lobes to the brain which is why we tend to be interested in symmetry, always balancing things. — Gore Vidal

Without communism ... our state lacks a Wizard of Oz to terrify all the people all the time. So the state looks inward, at the true enemy, who turns out to be - who else? the people of the United States. — Gore Vidal

Since the individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining, the average man must take to daydreaming. — 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

Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world. — Gore Vidal

FBI slaughter of the innocents at Waco was a model Jacobin enterprise. — Gore Vidal

Every country should have at least one King Farouk. — Gore Vidal

That famous writer's block is a myth as far as I'm concerned. I think bad writers must have a great difficulty writing. They don't want to do it. They have become writers out of reasons of ambition. It must be a great strain to them to make marks on a page when they really have nothing much to say, and don't enjoy doing it. I'm not so sure what I have to say but I certainly enjoy making sentences. — Gore Vidal

Let the dust take me when the adventure's done and I shall make the dust glitter for all eternity with my marvelous fury. — Gore Vidal

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers. — Gore Vidal

God, or what have you, will not be found at the far end of a syllogism, no matter how brilliantly phrased or conceived. — Gore Vidal

I used to read Gore Vidal books and think I was cool. — Matt Smith

Love is a fan club with only two fans. — Gore Vidal

Only a country that is based upon an extremely primitive religion, which is Christianity, I am a devoted enemy of monotheism in all of its forms, could have come with a categorizing of people as one thing or the other. — Gore Vidal

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

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. — Gore Vidal

Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house. — Gore Vidal

I'm a true reactionary. Like all patricians, I'd like to restore the original republic, which we lost 40 years ago when Harry Truman imposed the national security state on us, which has kept us at war, hot or cold, for almost half a century, and it's got us $4 trillion into debt. — Gore Vidal

Novels, except as aids to masturbation, play no part in contemporary life. — Gore Vidal

I'm in favor of any form of sexual relationship that gives pleasure to those involved. And I have never heard a convincing argument to the contrary. — Gore Vidal

I come from the highest class of all. I am a third-generation celebrity. — Gore Vidal

The usual pronouncement that Truman Capote is a 'birdbrain.' Gore [Vidal] has finished a novel called Two Sisters in which he admits that he and Jack Kerouac went to bed together - or was that in an article? (Gore told me about so many articles he's written and talks he has given that my memory spins.) Anyhow, Gore now regrets that he didn't describe the act itself; how they got very drunk and Kerouac said, 'Why don't we take a shower?' and then tried to go down on him but did it very badly, and then they belly rubbed. Next day, Kerouac claimed he remembered nothing; but later, in a bar, yelled out, 'I've blown Gore Vidal! — Christopher Isherwood

I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that's the most important thing there is for middle-class people. — Gore Vidal

Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. The sexual acts are entirely normal; if they were not, no one would perform them. — Gore Vidal

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

All over Greece, strangers of a certain age will greet one another with the question, "And where were you and what did you do when Xerxes came to Marathon?" Then they exchange lies. — Gore Vidal

A friend was surprised to hear me say that there was not one moment of my past that I would like to relive. — Gore Vidal

We affect one another quite enough merely by existing. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets? fragments pass briefly from one orbit to another. On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, neither losing more than a particle to the other, in passing. — Gore Vidal

It's odd to meet a rather elderly man who says, 'I've been reading you all my life.' It makes you feel a slight chill. — Gore Vidal

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

I say, they [those at the top] don't have to conspire, because they all think alike. The president of General Motors and the president of Chase Manhattan Bank really are not going to disagree much on anything, nor would the editor of the New York Times disagree with them. They all tend to think quite alike, otherwise they would not be in those jobs. — 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

A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact. — Gore Vidal

The whole book experience was a look into another world, the world of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer. — Jerry Kramer

I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort. — Gore Vidal

These people [Bush Administration] are for the most part rip-off artists. Notice that they're all gas and oil men from Cheney, to the two Bushes; I think Rumsfeld also. — Gore Vidal

What we are is seldom what we want to be, while what we want to be is either denied us or changes with the seasons. — Gore Vidal

My father once said something very shrewd about me to a woman journalist who had told him how courageous she thought I was for always speaking my mind. My father said, 'If you couldn't care less what anyone says about you, then it's not courage.' — Gore Vidal

Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors. — Gore Vidal

My father had lifelong contempt for politicians. — Gore Vidal

'Empire of Self' is a loving portrait of a very difficult man. Jay Parini, himself a gifted novelist, poet and biographer, has gone very deep into the 'black energy' of Gore Vidal's relentless narcissism and megalomania. Parini envisions an epic battle between Vidal's angelic and demonic sides, yet there's very little of the angel in Vidal. — Jerome Charyn

To preserve the human race, it is now necessary to reorganize society. To this end, an Authority must be created with the power to control human population, to redistribute food, to purify air, water, soil, to re-pattern the cities. — Gore Vidal

By 1939, the Depression was back. Unemployment was huge. Roosevelt didn't have any quick fix. Remember, the New Deal, Works Progress Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps - all that happened years before. Roosevelt was riding a storm. — Gore Vidal

Christianity is such a silly religion. — Gore Vidal

I don't want anything. I don't want a job. I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to it in 1976 on the grounds that I already belonged to the Diners Club. — Gore Vidal

Writers since at least the heyday of Gore Vidal have bemoaned their audience's defection to other forms of entertainment. — Garth Risk Hallberg

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

In the town of Ravella, where I have a house, when the Supreme Court said that an act of sodomy, as they describe it, could not be committed between a man and his wife, the entire square burst into laughter. — 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

What I like least about myself is my belligerence. — Gore Vidal

There is no such thing as a true account of anything. — Gore Vidal

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

In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling. — Gore Vidal

What the police in their ignorance have not figured out is that they have lost all credibility since World War II. They are sort of parasites on the fringe of society and do no particular good for anyone except possibly themselves. — Gore Vidal

If you want to rise in politics in the United States, there is one subject you must stay away from, and that is politics. — Gore Vidal

Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead. — Gore Vidal

Contrary to vulgar legend the lives of great ballerinas are not entirely given up to a few minutes of graceful movement every night followed by champagne drunk out of their toeshoes till dawn, in the company of financiers ... no, most of their time is spent in filthy rehearsal halls, inhaling dust, or else in class, daily, year in year out, practicing, practicing even after they are already prima ballerinas. — Gore Vidal

The word 'radical' derives from the Latin word for root. Therefore, if you want to get to the root of anything you must be radical. It is no accident that the word has now been totally demonized ... — Gore Vidal

Whether you have an abortion, what you put in your own body, with whom you have sex - these are not the affairs of the state. A government does not exist to control the citizens. When it does, it is a tyranny, and must be fought. The tree of liberty, Jefferson warned us, must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots. — Gore Vidal

In actual fact, I have always been a conservative cross, borne sadly by liberal friends. — 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

Leggett feels that to be excitingly right in general is better than to be dully accurate in particular. That is why he is such an effective journalist. — Gore Vidal

I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon. I cannot understand the love affair. — Gore Vidal

Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit, it will be repeated over and over again. — Gore Vidal

The Americans are clever. They thoroughly understand things that have to do with money, war, death, sickness. And there is also a real tradition of skepticism in this country. — Gore Vidal

I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging. — Gore Vidal

I'm not paranoid, no. I'm different in that I have enemies. Very real ones. — Gore Vidal

By 1948, the Italians had begun to pull themselves together, demonstrating once more their astonishing ability to cope with disaster which is so perfectly balanced by their absolute inability to deal with success — Gore Vidal

I believe it's my pastoral duty to convert friends to atheism. — Gore Vidal

My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees, we die from the top. — Gore Vidal

We are in danger of government by professional office-holders ... — Gore Vidal

The novel ceases to be looked at as a novel. Such is the overwhelming power of motion pictures. Gore Vidal pointed out that the movies are the only thing anybody's really interested in. The association with movies and movie money can, and certainly did in my case, occlude a novel as a novel. — William Monahan

...weaving his verbal wreaths, in prose and verse, of marvellous poison ivy. — Gore Vidal

I write in different styles because I hear different voices in my head. It would be boring to have always the same voice, point of view. — Gore Vidal

By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed. — Gore Vidal

He's a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices. — Gore Vidal

It was of course Jefferson's gift at one time or another to put with eloquence the "right" answer to every moral question. In practice, however, he seldom deviated from an opportunistic course, calculated to bring him power. — Gore Vidal

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

It is my task always to know, particularly when I don't. — Gore Vidal

In the twentieth century, science has been everything and the arts almost nothing by comparison. As a result, many artists now pretend to be scientists. They try to imitate the strategies of science. Paintings that talk. Sculpture that swims. Books that turn to ash. New formulas just like the scientist. But that isn't science of course, nor is it art. Just the end of the road. — Gore Vidal

I deny that there's such a thing as a gay person. I deny there's such a thing as a heterosexual person. — Gore Vidal

Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid. — Gore Vidal

The American press exists for one purpose only, and that is to convince Americans that they are living in the greatest and most envied country in the history of the world. The Press tells the American people how awful every other country is and how wonderful the United States is and how evil communism is and how happy they should be to have freedom to buy seven different sorts of detergent. — Gore Vidal

I believe there's something very salutary in, say, beating up a gay-bashing policeman. Preferably one fights through the courts, through the laws, through education, but if at a neighborhood level violence is necessary, I'm all for violence. It's the only thing Americans understand. — Gore Vidal

If one starts with the anatomical difference, which even a patriarchal Viennese novelist was able to see was destiny, then one begins to understand why men and women don't get on very well within marriage, or indeed in any exclusive sort of long-range sexual relationship. He is designed to make as many babies as possible with as many different women as he can get his hands on, while she is designed to take time off from her busy schedule as astronaut or role model to lay an egg and bring up the result. Male and female are on different sexual tracks, and that cannot be changed by the Book or any book. Since all our natural instincts are carefully perverted from birth, it is no wonder that we tend to be, if not all of us serial killers, killers of our own true nature. — Gore Vidal

,I have never visited any city in the world where I was not told that I just missed the golden age. I seem never to be on time. Cyrus Sitema — Gore Vidal

Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda. — 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

American laws don't work, but at least the laws of physics might work. — 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

Before the cards that one is dealt by life are the cards that fate has dealt: one's family. — Gore Vidal

The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That's why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be. — Gore Vidal

A year later, Ayatollah Bennett declared, "I find no merit in the [drug] legalizers' case. The simple fact is that drug use is wrong. And the moral argument, in the end, is the most compelling argument." Of course, what this dangerous comedian thinks is moral James Madison and the Virginia statesman and Rights-man George Mason would have thought dangerous nonsense, particularly when his "morality" abolishes their gift to all of us, the Bill of Rights. — Gore Vidal

I am only at home in the present. — Gore Vidal

... the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earth ... and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the reader's attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness. — Gore Vidal

Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society ... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil. — Gore Vidal

All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious. — Gore Vidal