Source: Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 6
Context: Something was working in Roadstrum's little ape head. When he had been a man he had always known when it was time for action; particularly he had always known the last moment when action was still possible. He knew now that that moment was come very near. … Then a blinding light burst upon Roadstrum, and he saw the truth of the situation. Many things Roadstrum was not, and it was sometimes wondered why he was the natural leader of all the men. He was their leader because he was a man on whom the blinding light sometimes descended.
“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.”
"America First? America Last? America at Last?," Lowell Lecture, Harvard University (20 April 1992).
1990s
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Gore Vidal 163
American writer 1925–2012Related quotes
“A man could get used to anything if he had to.”
Source: I Am Legend and Other Stories
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth
Latif Yahia, double for Uday Saddam Hussein, in I knew… Saddam (31 July 2007) Al Jazeera English
Attributed
Source: What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches
Source: The Doctrine of the Mean
"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)
1990s