Gore Vidal was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, screenwriter and political activist. He wrote many novels, plays, essays and screenplays, as well as political commentaries. He was known for his wit, his erudite style of writing, and his advocacy of liberal causes.
What is the most famous quote by Gore Vidal ?
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
— Gore Vidal
What can you learn from Gore Vidal (Life Lessons)
- Gore Vidal taught us to never be afraid to express our opinions, no matter how unpopular they may be. He also taught us to never be afraid to challenge the status quo and to always stand up for what we believe in. Lastly, he reminded us that we should always strive to be independent thinkers and to never let anyone else dictate our beliefs.
The most fascinating Gore Vidal quotes that are proven to give you inner joy
Following is a list of the best quotes, including various Gore Vidal inspirational quotes, and other famous sayings by Gore Vidal.
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.
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.
There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild.
Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.
Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the American political elite from the beginning.
Provocative quotes by Gore Vidal
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too.
Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action.
That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
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.
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper.
Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
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.
We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic.
My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general ("They tell lies," he used to say with wonder, "even when they don't have to").
Quotations by Gore Vidal that are satirical and witty
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.
All the other candidates are making speeches about how much they have done for their country, which is ridiculous. I haven't done anything yet, and I think it's just common sense to send me to Washington and make me do my share.
Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. "We have a single system," he wrote, and "in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses."
There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
Terrorism is a direct response to the crimes our government has committed against foreigners (besides which, the actual terrorists are within our own government)
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
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.
It makes no difference whom you vote for -- the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.
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.
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
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.
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
Country is run by... financial powers & corporate interests [who] send their lawyers to Congress to make laws so that they don't have to pay taxes
You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?
There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master the victory cry of the great ape as it issued from the androgynous chest of Johnny Weissmuller, to the accompaniment of thousands of arms and legs snapping during attempts to swing from tree to tree in the backyards of the Republic.
I suspect that our own faith in psychiatry will seem as touchingly quaint to the future as our grandparents' belief in phrenology seems now to us.
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.
There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.
Style is knowing who you are, what to say, and not giving a damn.
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. ... I have 10 or so, and thats a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.
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.
First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me.
I'm a born - again atheist.
To bring into the world an unwanted human being is as antisocial an act as murder.
He's a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.
The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since.
True wisdom is to know the extent of what you don't know quite as well as you know what you do know.
Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.