Quotes from Gore Vidal

In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.

Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art.

Writers who teach tend to prefer literary theory to literature and tenure to all else. Writers who do not teach prefer the contemplation of Careers to art of any kind.

If you are a Representative and want to be a Senator, you must be careful not to do anything which might upset the various forces you need to harness to get elected.

The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But it has been much studied.

Anybody who is stupid enough to want to be remembered deserves to be forgotten right now.

No sooner does an American president take his oath of office than the speculation begins: Will he be reelected in four years' time? If not, who will succeed him? A member of his own party? The other party?

I was never my own type so I completely missed my beauty all through my youth.

The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true. Since I ought to be arrogant, impressed with my social position, overwhelmed by my beauty, therefore I am.

I'd still like to be the President, of course, and I think the best way to do that would be to raise an army and seize the Capital. This strikes me as true democracy.

Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all.

Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.

Friends, there is no Left in American politics.

Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He understood how the economy works. But because he had used various dodges to stay out of the Vietnam War, he came to office ill at ease with the military.

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.

To bring into the world an unwanted human being is as antisocial an act as murder.

As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a police state, at least in a police city.

Overcrowding in the cities is producing a collective madness in which irrational violence flourishes because man needs more space in which to be than the modern city allows.

The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

Whenever a friend suceeds, a little something in me dies.

The Americans are clever. They thoroughly understand things that have to do with money, war, death, sickness. And there is also a real tradition of skepticism in this country.

We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us the truth about anything, serving their corporate masters who have other plans to dominate us.