Gore Vidal: Trending quotes (page 7)

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“We must always remember that the police are recruited from the criminal classes.”

Gore Vidal

As quoted by Dick Cavett, in "The Swimmers" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/books/review/Cavett-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin, The New York Times (3 June 2007)
2000s

“To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.”

Gore Vidal

Source: 1990s, Screening History (1992), Ch. 1: The Prince and the Pauper, pp.2-3

“Post-9/11, the American media were filled with pre-emptory denunciations of unpatriotic 'conspiracy theorists', who not only are always with us but are usually easy for the media to discredit since it is an article of faith that there are no conspiracies in American life.”

Gore Vidal

"The Enemy Within" https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/EnemyWithin.html, The Observer (27 October 2002)
2000s

Life , Faith

“Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.”

Gore Vidal

"Gods and Greens" (1989)
1990s, A View from the Diner's Club (1991)

Thinking

“People in my situation get to read about themselves whether they want to or not. It's generally wrong. Or oversimplified — which is sometimes useful.”

Gore Vidal

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

People , Reading

“Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around.”

Gore Vidal

"Sex Is Politics" (1979)
1980s, The Second American Revolution (1983)

Religion , Way

“Now we have a totalitarian government. And the totalitarian government wants to watch everybody, total surveillance of everyone. They listen to the telephone conversations, they look at your credit cards, they look where you travel. We are totally policed. This is contrary to everything in our Constitution.”

Gore Vidal

2010s, "Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia" (2013)

Travel

“Precocious talents mature slowly if at all.”

Gore Vidal

"F. Scott Fitzgerald's Case" (1980)
1980s, The Second American Revolution (1983)

“In any case, rather like priests who have forgotten the meaning of the prayers they chant, we shall go on for quite a long time talking of books and writing books, pretending all the while not to notice that the church is empty and the parishioners have gone elsewhere to attend other gods, perhaps in silence or with new words.”

Gore Vidal

"French Letters: Theories of the New Novel" (1967)
1970s, Homage to Daniel Shays : Collected Essays (1972), Matters of Fact and Fiction : Essays 1973 - 1976 (1978)

God , Books , Silence , Time

“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.”

Gore Vidal

"Gods and Greens" (1989)
1990s, A View from the Diner's Club (1991)

Democracy

“There is no terror equal that of the ignorant in a strange place.”

Gore Vidal

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 16

“We're supposed to procreate and society, god knows, is ferocious on the subject. Heterosexuality is considered such a great and natural good that you have to execute people and put them in prison if they don't practice this glorious act.”

Gore Vidal

"American psyche" http://arts.independent.co.uk/books/features/article171192.ece, extract from interview with Anthony Clare on BBC Radio 4, "In the Psychiatrist's Chair"; published in The Independent (8 October 2000).
2000s

God , People , Nature

“Don’t ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren’t any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I’m never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.”

Gore Vidal

The Times Online http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article6854221.ece, (30 September 2009)
2000s

People , Thinking

“…American society, literary or lay, tends to be humorless. What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?”

Gore Vidal

"Edmund Wilson: This Critic and This Gin and These Shoes"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

“The hatred Americans have for their own government is pathological, if understandable. At one level it is simply thwarted greed: since our religion is making a buck, giving a part of that buck to any government is an act against nature.”

Gore Vidal

"The State of the Union", Esquire magazine, (May 1975)
1970s

Religion , Understanding , Nature , Parting

“We are all in the habit of censuring the great, as if we were popular playwrights, when in fact ordinary folk are quite as devious and as willful and as desperate to survive (if not prevail) as are thee great; particularly philosophers.”

Gore Vidal

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 11

“His fault was a common one. He simply did not know what he was; he saw no flaw in himself, a not unusual blindness and preferable, on the whole, to being unable to find any virtue in oneself.”

Gore Vidal

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 6

“I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.”

Gore Vidal

Quoted in profile by Martin Amis, "Mr. Vidal: Unpatriotic Gore" (1977) in The Moronic Inferno (1987)
1970s

Love , Sex , Understanding

“Modern Christianity is a encyclopedia of traditional superstition.”

Gore Vidal

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 5

“Basler finds my Lincoln the 'phoniest historical novel I have ever had the pleasure of reading.'… Also, 'more than half the book could never have happened as told.' Unfortunately, he doesn't say which half. If I knew, we could then cut it free from the phony half and publish the result as Basler's Vidal's Lincoln.”

Gore Vidal

"Lincoln and the Priests of Academe"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

Pleasure , Books , Reading