The collection / 75 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01Undated

The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.

Gore Vidal / quote

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02Undated

History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

Gore Vidal / quote

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03Undated

Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.

Gore Vidal / quote

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04Undated

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

Gore Vidal / quote

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05Undated

Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and we meet death with the same equanimity as life. No longer will children's minds be twisted by evil gods whose fantastic origin is in those barbaric tribes who feared death and lightning, who feared life. That's it: life is the villain to to those who preach reward in death, through grace and eternal bliss, or through dark revenge.

Gore Vidal / quote

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06Undated

You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.

Gore Vidal / quote

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07Undated

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.

Gore Vidal / quote

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08Undated

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

Gore Vidal / quote

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09Undated

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

Gore Vidal / quote

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10Undated

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 / quote

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11Undated

To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.

Gore Vidal / quote

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12Undated

Ideally, of course, a relationship is best, but then how many people are capable of deep feeling? Practically none.

Gore Vidal / quote

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13Undated

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.

Gore Vidal / quote

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14Undated

Presidents have absolutely gone against the will of Congress. Congress hasn't declared a war since December 7, 1941, and yet we've been at war ever since with somebody or other in order to justify the war machine. Now we have alienated almost the entire earth

Gore Vidal / quote

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15Undated

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 / quote

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16Undated

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 / quote

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17Undated

There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.

Gore Vidal / quote

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18Undated

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

Gore Vidal / quote

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19Undated

It is ironic-rouse the limpest adjective-that a government as spontaneously tyrannous and callous as ours should, over the years, have come yo care so much about our health as it endlessly tests and retests commercial drugs available in other lands while arresting those who take "hard" drugs on the potential ground that they are bad for the user's health. One is touched by their concern- touched and dubious. After all, these same compassionate guardians of our well-being have sternly, year in and year out, refused to allow us to have what every other First World country simply takes for granted, a national health service.

Gore Vidal / quote

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20Undated

Foreigners are mystified by the whole business while thoughtful Americans – there are several of us – are equally mystified that the ruling establishment of the country has proved to be so mindlessly vindictive that it is willing, to be blunt, to overthrow the lawful government of the United States – that is, a president elected in 1992 and reelected in 1995 by We the People, that sole source of all political legitimacy, which takes precedence over the Constitution and the common law and God himself.

Gore Vidal / quote

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21Undated

The malice of a true Christian attempting to destroy an opponent is something unique in the world. No other religion ever considered it necessary to destroy others because they did not share the same beliefs. At worst, another man's belief might inspire amusement or contempt—the Egyptians and their animal gods, for instance. Yet those who worshipped the Bull did not try to murder those who worshipped the Snake, or to convert them by force from Snake to Bull. No evil ever entered the world quite so vividly or on such a vast scale as Christianity did.

Gore Vidal / quote

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22Undated

Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans [i.e., Christians] say they believe and what, in fact, they do believe, as demonstrated by their actions. A religion of brotherhood and mildness which daily murders those who disagree with its doctrines can only be thought hypocrite, or worse.

Gore Vidal / quote

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23Undated

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.

Gore Vidal / quote

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24Undated

Love and hate are so confused in your savage minds and the vibrations of the one are so very like those of the other that I can't always distinguish. You see, we neither love nor hate in my world. We simply have hobbies.

Gore Vidal / quote

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