Quotes from Gore Vidal

By the end of World War II, we were the most powerful and least damaged of the great nations. We also had most of the money. America's hegemony lasted exactly five years.

Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination.

One's neighbor is always the enemy. That is the nature of things.

A superficial education would be worse than none. But a full education would open every man's eyes to the nature of human existence.

I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it's true that I am, by nature, belligerent.

It is of no consequence what others think of you. What matters is what you think of them. That is how you live your life.

Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

Politics is made up of two words: "Poli," which is Greek for "many," and "tics," which are bloodsucking insects.

As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

Ronald Reagan: a triumph of the embalmer's art.

In a society like ours, politics is improvisation. To the artful dodger rather than the true believer goes the prize.

These are two opposing forces, and whenever I am in active politics, I stop writing. And when I'm writing, I don't politick.

There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.

Always a godfather, never a god.

God, or what have you, will not be found at the far end of a syllogism, no matter how brilliantly phrased or conceived.

Terrorism is a direct response to the crimes our government has committed against foreigners (besides which, the actual terrorists are within our own government)

If [drugs] didn't exist, our government would have to invent them, the better to enact laws aimed at keeping the citizens "sinless and obedient."

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?

For true happiness, it is not enough to be successful oneself . . . one's friends must fail.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.