Gore Vidal Quotes

Politics is made up of two words: "Poli," which is Greek for "many," and "tics," which are bloodsucking insects.

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.

The war against terror is like a war against dandruff. It's a metaphor. It's not about anything.

Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors.

One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

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

No reform ever came from the bottom, and it was always people who understood how the ruling class worked who turned out to be the reformers.

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

There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be.

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

Next to "I win," "I told you so" are the sweetest words.

We have a great deal to learn from Scandinavia and a great deal to be alarmed at from the Mediterranean.

The brain that doesn't feed itself, eats itself.

Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all.

Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

Despite the warnings of other times, the impetuous and the confident continue their indiscriminate cultivation of weeds at the expense of occasional flowers.

Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.

Can you imagine having a love affair going on and on decade after decade? Macabre.

If satire is to be effective, the audience must be aware of the thing satirized.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist - I’m a conspiracy analyst.

In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death

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.

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

Since no one can ever know for certain whether or not his own view of life is the correct one, it is absolutely impossible for him to know if someone else's is the wrong one.

Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.

A good deed never goes unpunished.

The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes.

The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

Populists have never had a good press in Freedom's land.

I might become an ascetic, live in India. A little rice is about the best I can do now.

Never have children, only grandchildren.

I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place

I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.

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

The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small 'yes' at the center of a vast 'no.'

The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge.

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.

Ronald Reagan: a triumph of the embalmer's art.

I liked the trichotomy, that's the only thing I ever liked.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives would be not only meager but in a youth-worshiping country like America painfully brief.

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.

I am savage about what has been done to the United States by its rulers.

Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60.