By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I suspect that our own faith in psychiatry will seem as touchingly quaint to the future as our grandparents' belief in phrenology… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I like the distance that Europe gives me. Also if I stayed in America I'd be a full-time politician and have no… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
The world came so close to self-destruction during my lifetime. I was serving in the American Army, in the Pacific, at the… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it's gossip with some point to it. That's why I… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
We are given our place in time as we are given our eyes: weak, strong, clear, squinting, the thing is not ours… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
“It was of course Jefferson’s gift at one time or another to put with eloquence the “right” answer to every moral question.… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I have been saying for the some time now that America has only one party - the property party. It's the party… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
“Marietta, I do not believe in ghosts, astrology, palmistry, graphology, John Cage, love or God. I do believe in the moment, in… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
“As for the human case, the generation of men come and go and are in eternity no more than bacteria upon a… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I think since Watergate people are interested in what the past of this country was really like. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king's death or upon the identity of… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Despite the warnings of other times, the impetuous and the confident continue their indiscriminate cultivation of weeds at the expense of occasional… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I am a born novelist, which does not happen all that often. There are people who try to write for a certain… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Eisenhower's career demonstrated how it is possible to fool all the people all the time...'I may be stupid,' he once said at… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time—now, too, I suppose—actually thought that at a given moment in… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I spend most of my time in California. I feel I am fueled by rage and by the political climate there. I… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Writing of history is our only heuristic principle. The Germans have a word for it, einfühlen. It is the ability to experience… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Memory is strange. Scientifically, it is not a mechanical means of repeating something. I can think a thousand times about when I… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party...and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Many people in the United States happen to believe that United States policy is wrong in Vietnam and the Vietcong are correct in wanting… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
“It is curious how little interested we are in the sexual desires of those who do not attract us.” — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
This separation was absolute in our original Republic. But the sky-godders do not give up easily. In the 1950s they actually got the phrase… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
The oligarchs think that the people are both dangerous and stupid. Their point is moot. But we do know that the oligarchs are a… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Rome ... at its most decadent, had never thought of hiring an actor to go through the motions of being an emperor while the… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Sex is a continuum. You go through different phases along life's way... and if you don't, you've been sort of cheated. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
