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

Gore Vidal
World

More Quotes By Gore Vidal

Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.
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Choice Democracy Feeling
The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.
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Needs Nothing Theater Work Worth
A good deed never goes unpunished.
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Deed
Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
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Suicide
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.
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Class Genius Majority Nothing People Questioning Taxes
Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.
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Advertising American World
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
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People
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
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Literature Time Virtue World Writers
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
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American President
Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
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Books Public Today
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.
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America Race Writer
Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
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Friend Time
Never have children, only grandchildren.
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Children
There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.
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Impulses People
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
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Children Parents
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
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Bribery Democracy
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
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By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.
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Man Time
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
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Democracy Elections
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
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Words
The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.
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Buying Money Pleasure
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
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American President
The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
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American Money
Andy Warhol is the only genius I’ve ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
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Genius
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
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Disguise Language People Time Vote Will Words
We’re not a democracy.
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Democracy
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
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Audiences Writers
That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.
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Books Busyness May World Writers
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?
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Culture
As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
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Age President Television Will
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.
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Being Earth Living Numbers Years
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
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American Commerce Nation states United
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.
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Corporate Country Dissent First Media Opinion states United Wonders World
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.
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Birds Man Trees
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.
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Facts Opinions Question
One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.
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Road
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
Gore Vidal
In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.
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Writing
There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
Gore Vidal
There’s a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
Gore Vidal
Being
I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
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Chance Sex Television
It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
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Succeed
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
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Friend
The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
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President
It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
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Age Exercise Fact Spirit
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they’re scraping the top of the barrel.
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Now Television
Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
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Age Middle age Sex
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
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Giving Style Want
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
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American People President
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.
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Life Meaning Nothing Sex