Best 416 quotes of Gore Vidal on MyQuotes

Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. The sexual acts are entirely normal; if they were not, no one would perform them.

A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adective 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 hightest 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.

Age bothers everybody. I was never narcissistic about my looks, but people thought that I should be so therefore I was.

A huge number of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. You have a people that don't know anything about the rest of the world, and you have leaders who lie to them, lie to them, and lie to them.

All Americans born between 1890 and 1945 wanted to be movie stars.

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.

All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious.

Although drugs are immoral and must be kept from the young, thousands of schools pressure parents to give the drug Ritalin to any lively child who may, sensibly, show signs of boredom in his classroom. Ritalin renders the child docile if not comatose. Side effects? "Stunted growth, facial tics, agitation and aggression, insomnia, appetite loss, headaches, stomach pains and seizures." Marijuana would be far less harmful.

Although the notion of one god may give comfort to those in need of a daddy, it reminds the rest of us that the totalitarian society is grounded upon the concept of God the father. One paternal god, one paternal leader. Authority is absolute.

Altruism is a brief phase through which some adolescents must pass. It is rather like acne. Happily, as with acne, only a few are permanently scarred.

American laws don't work, but at least the laws of physics might work.

Americans are not only a less homogenous population than we were when we were 3 million ex-colonists, but we're less educated. On top of that, we have constant misinformation and manipulation by media.

Americans worship the Constitution but do not observe it.

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60.

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

Anybody, at any time, may equally find himself victim or executioner.

anyone who sings about love and harmony and life [john lennon] is dangerous to someone who sings about death and killing and subduing [Nixon]

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

Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.

As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority.

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.

Astronauts: rotarians in outer space.

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

At a certain age, you have to live near good medical care — if, that is, you're going to continue. You always have the option of not continuing, which, I fear, is sometimes nobler.

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.

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.

a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a journalist)

A writer represents his family history. My grandfather was a senator and my father served in the Roosevelt administration. In other words, I grew up in politics. This is why it seemed perfectly natural to take part in the battles of my time, and to participate in the writing of the history of my country.

Baum (Writer of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ) was a true educator, and those who read his Oz books are often made what they were not-imaginative , tolerant, alert to wonders, life.

Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. Nothing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.

Before the cards that one is dealt by life are the cards that fate has dealt: one's family.

Before the word gay had really been invented, was there's no such thing. Only a country, basically as mindless about these matters - based upon our peasant superstitions, religious superstitions - would they make categories. Everybody's everything.

Between Malraux, Balzac, and Montaigne, I choose Montaigne. Montaigne will survive all the others, because the essay, meaning direct communication between the writer and his reader, will outlast the novel, by at least a thousand years.

Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.

But women are always attracted to power. I do not think there could ever be a conqueror so bloody that most women would not willingly lie with him in the hope of bearing a son who would be every bit as ferocious as the father.

By 1948, the Italians had begun to pull themselves together, demonstrating once more their astonishing ability to cope with disaster which is so perfectly balanced by their absolute inability to deal with success

By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed.

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

Can you imagine having a love affair going on and on decade after decade? Macabre.

Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house.

Celebrities are invariably celebrity-mad, just as liars always believe liars.

Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.

CO₂ emissions anywhere threaten civilisation everywhere.

Come to me and show me a small cancer and I'll tell you you've got a small cancer that should be cut out. That's realism but in America it's called cynicism.

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

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.

Contrary to vulgar legend the lives of great ballerinas are not entirely given up to a few minutes of graceful movement every night followed by champagne drunk out of their toeshoes till dawn, in the company of financiers ... no, most of their time is spent in filthy rehearsal halls, inhaling dust, or else in class, daily, year in year out, practicing, practicing even after they are already prima ballerinas.