Home > Author > Gore Vidal
61 " Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange. "
― Gore Vidal , Julian
62 " How hungrily we read about ourselves! "
63 " For the average American freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more. "
― Gore Vidal , Burr
64 " We are given our place in time as we are given our eyes: weak, strong, clear, squinting, the thing is not ours to choose. Well, this has been a squinting, walleyed time to be born in. "
65 " 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. "
― Gore Vidal , Point to Point Navigation
66 " This separation was absolute in our original Republic. But the sky-godders do not give up easily. In the 1950s they actually got the phrase In God We Trust onto the currency, in direct violation of the First Amendment. "
― Gore Vidal , The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
67 " Eventually all things are known. And few matter. "
68 " I have been reading Plotinus all evening. He has the power to sooth me; and I find his sadness curiously comforting. Even when he writes: “Life here with the things of earth is a sinking, a defeat, a failure of the wing.” The wing has indeed failed. One sinks. Defeat is certain. Even as I write these lines, the lamp wick sputters to an end, and the pool of light in which I sit contracts. Soon the room will be dark. One has always feared that death would be like this. But what else is there? With Julian, the light went, and now nothing remains but to let the darkness come, and hope for a new sun and another day, born of time’s mystery and a man’s love of life. "
69 " Americans tend to play different roles, hoping that somehow they’ll stumble on the right one. "
― Gore Vidal , The City and the Pillar
70 " There are, then, three sorts of religious experiences. The ancient rites, which are essentially propitiatory. The mysteries, which purge the soul and allow us to glimpse eternity. And philosophy, which attempts to define not only the material world but to suggest practical ways to the good life, as well as attempting to synthesize (as Iamblichos does so beautifully) all true religion in a single comprehensive system. "
71 " The rhetoric of hate is often most effective when couched in the idiom of love. "
72 " The planet Venus, a circle of silver in a green sky, pierced the edge of the evening while the wintry woods darkened about me and in the stillness the regular sound of my footsteps striking the pavement was like a the rhythmic beating of a giant stone heart. "
― Gore Vidal , Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories
73 " Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. … I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them. "
74 " No one can ever love us quite so much as we love ourselves. "
75 " On the throne of the world, any delusion can become fact. "
76 " …the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earth…and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the reader’s attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness. "
77 " Let the dust take me when the adventure's done and I shall make the dust glitter for all eternity with my marvelous fury. "
― Gore Vidal , Myra Breckinridge
78 " I say his version because there is no such thing as a true account of anything. Each sees the world from his own vantage point. Needless to say, a throne is not the best place from which to view anything except the backs of prostrate men. "
― Gore Vidal , Creation
79 " Nothing that ever was changes. Yet nothing that is can ever be the same as what went before. "
80 " That's why Priscus is wisest of all: silence cannot be judged. Silence masks all things or no thing. Only Priscus can tell us what his silence conceals, but since he won't, we suspect him great. "