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All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
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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.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
Needs
Nothing
Theater
Work
Worth
A good deed never goes unpunished.
Gore Vidal
Deed
Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
Advertising
American
World
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
Literature
Time
Virtue
World
Writers
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
America
Race
Writer
Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
Gore Vidal
Friend
Time
Never have children, only grandchildren.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
Impulses
People
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
Gore Vidal
Children
Parents
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
Gore Vidal
Bribery
Democracy
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
Gore Vidal
By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.
Gore Vidal
Man
Time
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
Gore Vidal
Democracy
Elections
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
Buying
Money
Pleasure
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
Gore Vidal
American
President
The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
Gore Vidal
American
Money
Andy Warhol is the only genius I’ve ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
Disguise
Language
People
Time
Vote
Will
Words
We’re not a democracy.
Gore Vidal
Democracy
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
Gore Vidal
Audiences
Writers
That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.
Gore Vidal
Books
Busyness
May
World
Writers
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
Facts
Opinions
Question
One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
Chance
Sex
Television
It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Gore Vidal
Succeed
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
Gore Vidal
Friend
The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
Age
Exercise
Fact
Spirit
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they’re scraping the top of the barrel.
Gore Vidal
Now
Television
Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
Gore Vidal
Age
Middle age
Sex
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
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.
Gore Vidal
Life
Meaning
Nothing
Sex