Gore Vidal Quotes

The unfed mind devours itself.

حين تُشرِفُ على الموت تتغيَّر ؛ و حين تكون جندياً تتغيَّر ؛ و حين تتقدَّم في العمر تتغيَّر .

As the late afternoon sun shone in Shaw's face and a soft flower-scented wind cooled him, his unhappiness turned to a detachment that was not at all unpleasant. He was utterly alone in the world. This knowledge thrilled him.

American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.

I complain about the United States not being Athens. I certainly say we are a very good Roman republic, and the lies are based upon the most advanced techniques of advertising, which is the only art form my country has ever created — the television commercial — and we sell soap and presidents in the same fashion. Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back.

The period of Prohibition — called the noble experiment — brought on the greatest breakdown of law and order the United States has known until today. I think there is a lesson here. Do not regulate the private morals of people. Do not tell them what they can take or not take. Because if you do, they will become angry and antisocial and they will get what they want from criminals who are able to work in perfect freedom because they have paid off the police.

Since nothing is free, to each his price.

For the average American freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.

Little Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to be
at war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror,
but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means.
It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless.

The average "educated" American has been made to believe that, somehow, the United States must lead the world even though hardly anyone has any information at all about those countries we are meant to lead. Worse, we have very little information about our own country and its past. That is why it is not really possible to compare a writer like Howells with any living American writer because Howells thought that it was a good thing to know as much as possible about his own country as well as other countries while our writers today, in common with the presidents and paint manufacturers, live in a present without past among signs whose meanings are uninterpretable.

Although Americans justify their self-interest in moral terms, their true interest is never itself moral.

We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.

Americans are farcical when it comes to force majeure and money!
Two things that they worship.
You can't expect a democracy from a society like this.

Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.

POWERS: Well, good morning Mr. Kreton, and how are we today?
KRETON: Absolutely wallowing in the twentieth century.