Eugene Louis Vidal, better known as Gore Vidal, was a novelist, essayist, playwright and screenwriter from the United States, who was also regarded as one of the leading public intellectuals in the world in the 20th century. He was born in a distinguished family, which was politically active and his grandfather on the mother’s side was in fact a senator. Vidal was a political thinker, writer and intellectual whose primary focus was on the history of America, with special focus on the politics and foreign policy. He was an essayist for some of the leading publications like Esquire Magazine, The Nation and New York Review of Books among others. Vidal’s writing skills quickly established him as one of the leading intellectuals and thinkers in the United States, while his books made him a household name in the country. Some of his most well-known books include ‘The City and the Pillar’, ‘Burr’, ‘Lincoln’, ‘Julian’ and ‘Myra Breckinridge’ among others. ‘Myra Breckinridge’ was also turned into a film which drew a lot of controversy due to its contents. Vidal was also a master debater who went toe to toe with some of the leading thinkers of the day in televised debates and captivated audiences with the force of his arguments and his eloquence. Here are some of the very best Gore Vidal one liners and quotes.
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
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.
We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.
Gore Vidal
The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified 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.
Of course his dust would be absorbed in other living things and to that degree at least he would exist again, though it was plain enough that the specific combination which was he would never exist again.
I wanted to be a politician and a movie star. But I was born a writer. If you're born that, you can't change it. You're going to do it whether you want to or not.
We are given our place in time as we are given our eyes: weak, strong, clear, squinting, the thing is not ours to choose. Well, this has been a squinting, walleyed time to be born in.
Nothing that ever was changes. Yet nothing that is can ever be the same as what went before.
Gore Vidal
Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world.
Americans tend to play different roles, hoping that somehow they’ll stumble on the right one.
Gore Vidal
Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. … I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.
I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.
Gore Vidal
The rhetoric of hate is often most effective when couched in the idiom of love.
Prepare yourself for some bad news: Ronald Reagan’s library just burned down. Both books were destroyed. But the real horror: He hadn’t finished coloring either one of them.
Always beware of the fact, that the only thing hindering an all out revolution is your fear of losing the scraps they throw at you.--Twitter post, July 29, 2012
That's why Priscus is wisest of all: silence cannot be judged. Silence masks all things or no thing. Only Priscus can tell us what his silence conceals, but since he won't, we suspect him great.
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.
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
Gore Vidal
Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on.
Gore Vidal
Sexual revelation in literature, must be tactful and must serve plot
Gore Vidal
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
For a man to successful, not only must he succeed but his friends must also fail.
Say very mildly, we have only one political party in the U.S., the Property Party, with two right wings, Republican and Democrat.
Gore Vidal
...Leggett feels that to be excitingly right in general is better than to be dully accurate in particular. That is why he is such an effective journalist.
Gore Vidal
That my plans have lately gone somewhat awry is the sort of risk one must take if life is to be superb.
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