Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer
Quoted in Gert Jonkers, "Gore Vidal, the Fantastic Man," Butt, No. 20 (7 April 2007)
2000s
“History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.”
Quoted in Gert Jonkers, "Gore Vidal, the Fantastic Man," Butt, No. 20 (7 April 2007)
2000s
Context: Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it’s gossip with some point to it. That’s why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.
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Gore Vidal163
American writer 1925–2012Related quotes
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan
Cecil Graham http://books.google.com/books?id=8SzYgCNz-vwC&q=&quot;Gossip+is+charming+History+is+merely+gossip+But+scandal+is+gossip+made+tedious+by+morality&quot;&pg=PT52#v=onepage, Act III <br class="br">Variant: Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. <br class="br">Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
“The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.”
Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer
As quoted in The New Speaker's Treasury of Wit and Wisdom (1958) by Herbert Victor Prochnow, p. 190
As quoted in ...
Variant: The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.
“Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.”
Walter Winchell (1897–1972) American gossip journalist
Attributed
Brian P. Cleary (1959) American writer
Source: You Oughta Know By Now
“History is nothing whatever but a record of what living persons have done in the past.”
Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist
Give Me Liberty (1936)
“no one ever gossips about the virtues of others”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
1920s
Variant: No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
Source: On Education, Especially in Early Childhood (1926), Ch. 2: The Aims of Education, p. 50
Context: The instinctive foundation of the intellectual life is curiosity, which is found among animals in its elementary forms. Intelligence demands an alert curiosity, but it must be of a certain kind. The sort that leads village neighbours to try to peer through curtains after dark has no very high value. The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.
Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer
Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961), p.8