All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
U.S. certainly are not warlike. We don't want that. We want to make money, which I always thought was one of the… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
The period of Prohibition - called the noble experiment - brought on the greatest breakdown of law and order the United States… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
You will be favorable to Burr, and so must fail, because the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
People in my situation get to read about themselves whether they want to or not. It's generally wrong. Or oversimplified - which… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Ideally, the writer needs no audience other than the few who understand that it is immodest and greedy to want more. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
What we are is seldom what we want to be, while what we want to be is either denied us or changes… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Liberal comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I assume that the point of American democracy is you can express any point of view you want. — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
The word 'radical' derives from the Latin word for root. Therefore, if you want to get to the root of anything you… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States by owning the media, you can make the masses… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I don't want anything. I don't want a job. I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I turned down… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I'm not for real revolutions, because they always bring you the opposite of what you want. You very seldom get what you… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
I wanted to be a politician and a movie star. But I was born a writer. If you're born that, you can't… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
If you want to rise in politics in the United States, there is one subject you must stay away from, and that… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
That famous writer’s block is a myth as far as I’m concerned. I think bad writers must have a great difficulty writing.… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
It is natural for men to want power. But to seek power actively takes a temperament baffling to both the simple and… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
Private lives should be no business of the State. The State is bad enough as it is. It cannot educate or medicate… — Gore Vidal Copy Share Image
By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly… — 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
