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Gore Vidal Quotes
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Eugene Louis "Gore" Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his patrician manner, epigrammatic wit, and polished style of writing.

He was born to a political family; his maternal grandfather, Thomas Pryor Gore, served as United States senator from Oklahoma . He was a Democratic Party politician who twice sought elected office; first to the United States House of Representatives , then to the U.S. Senate .

As a political commentator and essayist, Vidal's principal subject was the history of the United States and its society, especially how the militaristic foreign policy reduced the country to a decadent empire. His political and cultural essays were published in The Nation, the New Statesman, the New York Review of Books, and Esquire magazines. As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal's topical debates on sex, politics, and religion with other intellectuals and writers occasionally turned into quarrels with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr. and Norman Mailer. As such, and because he thought all men and women are potentially bisexual, Vidal rejected the adjectives "homosexual" and "heterosexual" when used as nouns, as inherently false terms used to classify and control people in society.

As a novelist Vidal explored the nature of corruption in public and private life. His polished and erudite style of narration readily evoked the time and place of his stories, and perceptively delineated the psychology of his characters. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , offended the literary, political, and moral sensibilities of conservative book reviewers, with a dispassionately presented male homosexual relationship. In the historical novel genre, Vidal re-created in Julian the imperial world of Julian the Apostate , the Roman emperor who used general religious toleration to re-establish pagan polytheism to counter the political subversion of Christian monotheism. In the genre of social satire, Myra Breckinridge explores the mutability of gender role and sexual orientation as being social constructs established by social mores. In Burr and Lincoln , the protagonist is presented as "A Man of the People" and as "A Man" in a narrative exploration of how the public and private facets of personality affect the national politics of the U.S.

✵ 3. October 1925 – 31. July 2012
Gore Vidal photo
Gore Vidal: 163   quotes 4   likes

Gore Vidal Quotes

“No one can tell another man is true. Truth is all around us…Truth is where ever man has glimpsed divinity.”

Gore Vidal

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

Truth

“Anais Nin gave me my most original, or so I thought, creation.As I read Incest, I realized that something which I had always taken to be unique, the voice of Myra Breckinridge, was actually that of Anaïs in all the flowing megalomania of the diaries. Of course, I had not read the diaries then, but even so, if only for that one thundering voice, I am forever in her debt.”

Gore Vidal

Source: 1990s, Palimpsest : A Memoir (1995), Ch. 7: "Today My Nerves Are Shattered. But I Am Indomitable!," pp. 107-108

Reading

“Some of my father's fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, "I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any." We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.”

Gore Vidal

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

Secret

“By definition a bore is predictable. if you think you know in advance what a man is apt to say or do, you are not apt to be disagreeably surprised by him.”

Gore Vidal

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

Thinking

“We’re the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody’s afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.”

Gore Vidal

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

Way

“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

“I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).”

Gore Vidal

Preface http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/vidal_su95.html
1990s, The City and the Pillar and Seven Early Stories (1995)

“For reasons that I leave to a higher psychiatry, Jr. wanted a war in Iraq…. Jr. is really pretty vague, you know. He just wanted to go… "Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! We gotta stand tall, ya know? We can't cut and run, yeah, ya know what I mean." We've had bad presidents in the past, but we've never had a G-- D--d fool!”

Gore Vidal

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

War , Fools , Past

“At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.”

Gore Vidal

"Sex and the Law," Partisan Review (Summer 1965)
1970s, Homage to Daniel Shays : Collected Essays (1972)

“…for ferocity there is nothing on Earth equal a Christian bishop hunting "heresy", as they call any opinion contrary to their own.”

Gore Vidal

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 1, Priscus to Libanius, Athens March 380

“Constantinople has no past; only a noisy present and a splendid future, if the auguries are to be believed.”

Gore Vidal

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 2

Past , Future

“The rhetoric of hate is often most effective when couched in the idiom of love.”

Gore Vidal

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

Love , Hate

“The last best hope on earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie "answers" questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare.”

Gore Vidal

"Ollie" (1987) [Ollie = Oliver North ]
1980s, At Home (1988)

Hope , Question , Perfection

“I say, they don't have to conspire, because they all think alike. The president of General Motors and the president of Chase Manhattan Bank really are not going to disagree much on anything, nor would the editor of the New York Times disagree with them. They all tend to think quite alike, otherwise they would not be in those jobs.”

Gore Vidal

After being asked "Does someone as sophisticated as you are submit yourself to the conspiracy theory of history?""
1980s, At The David Susskind Show (1980)

Thinking , Time

“My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general ("They tell lies," he used to say with wonder, "even when they don't have to").”

Gore Vidal

"On Flying" (1985)
1980s, At Home (1988)

“There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.”

Gore Vidal

Preface to Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship http://books.google.com/books?id=LXFbAAAAMAAJ&q="There+is+something+about+a+bureaucrat+that+does+not+like+a+poem" (1969)
Preface to Sex, Death, and Money http://books.google.com/books?id=54JBAAAAIAAJ&q="There+is+something+about+a+bureaucrat+that+does+not+like+a+poem" (1969)
1960s

“Everything's wrong on Wikipedia.”

Gore Vidal

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

“Books always cost more in those cities where they are least read!”

Gore Vidal

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 1, Libanius to Priscus, Antioch March 380

Books , Reading

“I complain about the United States not being Athens. I certainly say we are a very good Roman republic, and the lies are based upon the most advanced techniques of advertising, which is the only art form my country has ever created — the television commercial — and we sell soap and presidents in the same fashion. Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back.”

Gore Vidal

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

Truth , Art , Fashion , Country

“You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It's just grotesque.”

Gore Vidal

On American Altruism http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=338
2000s, What I've Learned (2008), Gore Vidal's America (2009)

People , Education , Personality

“There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, "Well, so-and-so will like this," which you do when you're younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.”

Gore Vidal

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

Past

“The reason no one has yet been able to come up with a good word to describe the homosexualist (sometimes known as gay, fag, queer, etc.) is because he does not exist. The human race is divided into male and female. Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex, many don't; many respond to both. This plurality is the fact of our nature and not worth fretting about.”

Gore Vidal

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

Sex , Nature

“Constantine was never a true Galilean; he merely used Christianity to extend his dominion over the world. He was a shrewd professional soldier, badly educated and not in the least interested in philosophy, though some perverse taste in him was hugely satisfied by doctrinal disputes; the mad haggling of bishops fascinated him.”

Gore Vidal

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 2

World , Education , Madness

“By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed.”

Gore Vidal book Lincoln

Source: 1990s, Screening History (1992), Ch. 3: Lincoln, p. 78

“Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination.”

Gore Vidal

Source: 1990s, Screening History (1992), Ch. 1: The Prince and the Pauper, p. 23

Children , Books , Imagination

“Envy is the central fact of American life.”

Gore Vidal

"Gore Vidal," interview by Gerald Clarke (1974), The Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work, 5th series (1981)
1970s

Life , Envy

“Television is a great leveler. You always end up sounding like the people who ask the questions.”

Gore Vidal

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

People , Question

“Those who seem to think that the Bush administration had something to do with 9-11… I can prove that they didn't. They are totally incompetent! 9-11 was a brilliantly executed strike on the United States. I can't imagine anybody… I can't even imagine… Can you imagine Cheney, mumbling around, orchestrating something like that?”

Gore Vidal

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

Imagination , Thinking

“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 that has worked pretty well for twenty-five hundred years. So you see I am ecumenical in my dislike for the Book. But like it or not, the Book is there; and because of it people die; and the world is in danger.”

Gore Vidal

Appendix
1980s, At Home (1988)

God , Religion , People , Books