Quotes from Gore Vidal

It was of course Jefferson's gift at one time or another to put with eloquence the "right" answer to every moral question. In practice, however, he seldom deviated from an opportunistic course, calculated to bring him power.

To turn life into words is to make life yours to do with as you please, instead of the other way round

Sexual revelation in literature, must be tactful and must serve plot

Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.

As for the human case, the generation of men come and go and are in eternity no more than bacteria upon a luminous slide, and the fall of a republic or the rise of an empire—so significant to those involved—are not detectable upon the slide even were there an interested eye to behold that steadily proliferating species which would either end in time or, with luck, become something else, since change is the nature of life, and its hope.

As for our Ouija-board Supreme Court, it would be nice if they would take time off from holding séances with the long-dead founders, whose original intent so puzzles them, and actually examine what the founders wrought, the Constitution itself and the Bill of Rights.

What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.

say very mildly, we have only one political party in the U.S., the Property Party, with two right wings, Republican and Democrat.

Envy is the central fact of American life.

They say that to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is fully calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.

is not all philosophy but preparation for a serene dying?

Blaise rather liked the way that manners had been pared down to their essentials.

Love is not my bag.

we no longer live in a nation, but in a Homeland.

As the late afternoon sun shone in Shaw's face and a soft flower-scented wind cooled him, his unhappiness turned to a detachment that was not at all unpleasant. He was utterly alone in the world. This knowledge thrilled him.

It is infinitely harder to ask questions in such a way that the audience is led not to the answers (the province of the demagogue) but to new perceptions.

I believe in justice, I want redress for all wrongs done, I want the good life-if such a thing exists-accessible to all. Yet, emotionally, I would be only too happy to become world dictator, if only to fulfill my mission: the destruction of the last vestigial traces of traditional manhood in the race to realign the sexes, thus reducing population, while increasing human happiness and preparing humanity for its next stage.

Like the rest of us, Constantius was many men in the body of one.

I am afraid that as people grow old there is a tendency for them to believe that what the past *ought* to have been it was.

Why is it so important to continue after death? We never question the demonstrable fact that before birth we did not exist, so why should we fear becoming once more what we were to begin with?

None of this is quite true but Leggett feels that to be excitingly right in general is better than to be dully accurate in particular. That is why he is such an effective journalist.

Ronnie never stopped talking, even though he never had anything to say except what he had just read in the Reader's Digest, which he studied the way that Jefferson did Montesquieu.

I realize," said Sumner, "that the press is hardly reliable." Lincoln turned from the window; suddenly, he grinned. "Oh, yes, they are. They lie. And then they re-lie. So they are nothing if not re-lie-able.

Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans [i.e., Christians] say they believe and what, in fact, they do believe, as demonstrated by their actions. A religion of brotherhood and mildness which daily murders those who disagree with its doctrines can only be thought hypocrite, or worse.