"Growing Up With Gore Vidal," Screening History (1994), p. 24.
1990s
Context: A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those “liberals” who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the highest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.
“A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.”
Quoted in "Vidal: 'I'm at the Top of a Very Tiny Heap,'" profile by Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times (12 March 1981), Late City Final Edition, Section C, Page 17, Column 1.
1980s
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Gore Vidal 163
American writer 1925–2012Related quotes
Source: Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear
“There is always someone out there getting better than you by training harder than you.”
Eric Stanley on CBS News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksYrWGivy5A
2011
Interview with Laura Yorke. Reader's Digest. July 2006
“There is no disappointment so numbing… as someone no better than you achieving more.”