Gore Vidal: Good

Gore Vidal was American writer. Explore interesting quotes on good.

Gore Vidal: 326 quotes5 likes

“I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation, but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities.”

Gore Vidal

Source: Death Before Bedtime

“The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.”

Gore Vidal

“Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.”

Gore Vidal

“The average "educated" American has been made to believe that, somehow, the United States must lead the world even though hardly anyone has any information at all about those countries we are meant to lead. Worse, we have very little information about our own country and its past. That is why it is not really possible to compare a writer like Howells with any living American writer because Howells thought that it was a good thing to know as much as possible about his own country as well as other countries while our writers today, in common with the presidents and paint manufacturers, live in a present without past among signs whose meanings are uninterpretable.”

Gore Vidal

"William Dean Howells" (1983)
1980s, At Home (1988)

“In a good cause hypocrisy becomes a virtue.”

Gore Vidal

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

“American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.”

Gore Vidal book Two Sisters

Two Sisters: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel http://books.google.com/books?id=xnJbAAAAMAAJ&q=&quot;American+writers+want+to+be+not+good+but+great+and+so+are+neither&quot; (1970) <br class="br">1970s

“The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose.”

Gore Vidal

"America First? America Last? America at Last?" https://archive.is/20121212151230/www.dce.harvard.edu/pubs/lowell/gvidal.html, Lowell Lecture, Harvard University (20 April 1992) <br class="br">1990s

“At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our sky-godders, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that looney text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area.”

Gore Vidal

"America First? America Last? America at Last?," Lowell Lecture, Harvard University (20 April 1992).
1990s

“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). <br class="br">2000s

“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)

“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)

“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)