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The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.


Gore Vidal

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The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you d...
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you d...
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
LORD CHESTERFIELD Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, FOURTH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
LORD CHESTERFIELD All's well that carries on well
AMIT ABRAHAM When living is too sweet and swanky, it may be very hard to appreciate the simplest things in life. ...
ERIK PEVERNAGIE It does not seem to be true that work necessarily needs to be unpleasant. It may always have to be h...
MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual walk wit...
BROTHER LAWRENCE Nothing is more usual than the sight of old people who yearn for retirement: and nothing is so rare...
CHARLES DE SAINT-EVREMOND Nothing is more usual than the sight of old people who yearn for retirement: and nothing is so rare ...
CHARLES DE SAINT-EVREMOND A lot of what passes for depression these days is nothing more than a body saying that it needs work...
GEOFFREY NORMAN The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
JORGE LUIS BORGES I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix.
DEYTH BANGER Courage is feeling justly afraid and yet still doing what is right.
SHANNON HALE We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the dr...
MOTHER TERESA No man needs sympathy because he has to work. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the ch...
THEODORE ROOSEVELT Being present is being connected to All Things.
S. KELLEY HARRELL, M. DIV. Writers since at least the heyday of Gore Vidal have bemoaned their audience's defection to othe...
GARTH RISK HALLBERG Al Gore needs to understand that what happened in Florida is not necessarily about him, ... suffered...
ALCEE HASTINGS There never was a person who did anything worth doing, who did not receive more than he gave.
HENRY WARD BEECHER Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well
ELIAS SCHWARTZ Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well.
ROBERT FULGHUM There are still some people out there who believe comic books are nothing more than, well, comic boo...
JOHN RIDLEY The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be...
BARBARA EHRENREICH One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.
LEWIS CARROLL One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others
LEWIS CARROLL There is no thing known as bad luck. There is luck, or no luck at all.
JEFFREY FRY We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with...
SENECA (SENECA THE ELDER) Do your work; not just your work and no more, but a little more for the lavishing's sake -- that lit...
DEAN BRIGGS Do your work; not just your work and no more, but a little more for the lavishing's sake - that litt...
DEAN BRIGGS I am capable of doing things, but I am not what I do. I am the being who does those things. Therefor...
TERENCE T. GORSKI In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to...
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFóN Ques eso? Queso?
NOLAN J. VANDER HAAGEN Well, I think the main message is there is more to your story. There is more than what happens betwe...
MAX LUCADO Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. We all are wearing many hundred glasses of different colors. Therefore, everyone sees the world in d...
MUDITHA CHAMPIKA One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.
LEWIS CARROLL If what you are is more important to you, than what you do, it is better to do nothing and have your...
APURVA GAGLANI All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those ...
OSCAR WILDE Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well. Think about it.
ELIAS SCHWARTZ What Fucks me... is that we both are the same... we all walk on the same path... but everything is a...
DEYTH BANGER She buys "mixed salad greens" for seven dollars a bag, triple-washed with who knows what. And to get...
RUDOLPH DELSON I enjoy this arena, ... There is nothing more empowering than knowing who you are, that you are wher...
RON ODEN If the best is possible, than good is never enough and only do the best.
ROBERT SIAHAAN Goshawks are things of death and blood and gore, but they are not excuses for atrocities. Their inhu...
HELEN MACDONALD It's not a Christian store ... Go Fish is a store run by Christians who want to show the integrity o...
CURT COLEMAN The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without ...
ALBERT EINSTEIN Our father taught us such a work ethic that if there's something worth doing, it's worth doi...
DONNY OSMOND Nothing is more theater-based than wrestling. It's Greek-tragedy-level theater.
BETTY GILPIN There is nothing more euphoric than doing what you love, just because you love it.
DEDRICK D. L. PITTER What we're doing is nothing more than what we've been doing for the last 20 years.
HARVEY JEWETT A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those wh...
JIM ROHN There is absolutely nothing we can do to control that or affect that other than go play well against...
FRANK BEAMER There's nothing more marvelously wintery than orange root veg mash; some butter is all it needs.
YOTAM OTTOLENGHI Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well.
STEVE BROWN There is something very utopian about what I do. But utopia is nothing more than a truth that the wo...
YANN ARTHUS-BERTRAND No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the bes...
THEODORE ROOSEVELT Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that div...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN There is nothing more boring than doing singing exercises.
P. J. HARVEY 'Empire of Self' is a loving portrait of a very difficult man. Jay Parini, himself a gifted ...
JEROME CHARYN Hiding in all the thorns, there is a yellow rose.
BEN OAK To Those Who Think,
To Those Who Dare,
To Those Who Do,
To Those Who Succeed.

S...
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY There is nothing in the world more dreary than a prayer that attempts to inform God of anything at a...
EDWARD N. WEST I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is.
TED TURNER But what's worth more than gold?"

"Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heav...
TERRY PRATCHETT There is nothing I dislike more in the world than people who care more about ideology than they do a...
JON RONSON Nothing is worth more than this day.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.
ELIZABETH KOSTOVA What Gore needs, to counter the anti-Clinton, anti-Gore sentiment that's out there for a number of D...
NORMAN ORNSTEIN No doubt it is true that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repented than over all th...
BOOTH TARKINGTON Those who always speak well of women do not know them sufficiently; those who always speak ill of th...
GUILLAUME PIGUALT-LEBRUN There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
PETER DRUCKER There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
PETER F. DRUCKER You didn't succeed. Well, what of that? There's nothing to prove, you know, and the revolution's not...
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE For me, there is nothing more valuable than how people feel in a movie theater about a movie.
WILL SMITH Over three October surveys, he's steadily increased the percentage of people who say he is likable, ...
ANDY KOHUT Nothing is more inimical to the progress of science than the belief that we know what we do not yet ...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG There is nothing more real than what cannot be seen and there is nothing more certain than what cann...
CONFUCIUS Less is more, unless you're Al Gore.
UNKNOWN Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT When push comes to shove would people do what they felt was right, to get justice done or would they...
GARY F EVANS... Szerzetesek, vannak tanulatlan, közönséges emberek, akik nem gondolnak a nemes dolgokkal, nem hal...
GAUTAMA BUDDHA És Brahmá, a Teremtő, felső ruháját fél vállán átvetve, összetett kézzel meghajolt a Mag...
GAUTAMA BUDDHA Each member of this shadowy network resented the others, who were irritating reminders that nothing ...
BEN LERNER Who you really are is Nonphysical Energy focused is a physical body, knowing full well that all is w...
ABRAHAM HICKS What is it to serve God and to do His will? Nothing else than to show mercy to our neighbor. For it ...
MARTIN LUTHER When carrying the burden of problems and stress that life seems to endlessly hurtle towards us. We g...
GARY F EVANS... To have hope in an age where hope is very scarce and hurt, jealousy and pain are more prominent is a...
GARY F EVANS... Truth metastasized into lurid fantasy.
F. MULDER What matters is the one thing I do know for certain: God is with me.
CRAIG GROESCHEL To search the sands of a lost desert for truth and justice in this world today you might as well be ...
GARY F EVANS... There is no man living who isn't capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.
HENRY FORD Sooner or later, what you do will speak
SOTONYE ANGA There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger,...
MICHEL FOUCAULT There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger,...
MICHEL FOUCAULT There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger,...
MICHEL FOUCAULT Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.
GEORGE ORWELL You have no legal right to those benefits at all. There is nothing in the world that is less guarant...
MICHAEL TANNER Integrity is not everything, but it is the only thing that matters.
JEFFREY FRY

More Gore Vidal

Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, 'Well, so-and-so will like this,' which ...
GORE VIDAL McCain is significant in the sense that he has no significance at all on any subject.
GORE VIDAL I can understand companionship.
GORE VIDAL Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He u...
GORE VIDAL The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of 'Tales from Li...
GORE VIDAL I'm not paranoid, no. I'm different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.
GORE VIDAL What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose p...
GORE VIDAL The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country - and we haven't seen them ...
GORE VIDAL As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a pol...
GORE VIDAL The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No Fi...
GORE VIDAL At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.
GORE VIDAL Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some eviden...
GORE VIDAL Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
GORE VIDAL I could be a lot happier. I could be the senator from Aerospace taking bribes, and be quite happy.
GORE VIDAL I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to ...
GORE VIDAL Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
GORE VIDAL Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness witho...
GORE VIDAL Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps twenty players, an...
GORE VIDAL That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness...
GORE VIDAL Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
GORE VIDAL For half a century photography has been the "art form" of the untalented. Obviously some pictures ar...
GORE VIDAL Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is...
GORE VIDAL Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence...
GORE VIDAL Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
GORE VIDAL It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Fr...
GORE VIDAL I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
GORE VIDAL There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo -- or heterosex...
GORE VIDAL Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex cer...
GORE VIDAL The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
GORE VIDAL Never have children, only grand children.
GORE VIDAL Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described,...
GORE VIDAL I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you ...
GORE VIDAL When Ronald Reagan's career in show business came to an end, he was hired to impersonate, first, a C...
GORE VIDAL How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time...
GORE VIDAL There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master...
GORE VIDAL Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is a...
GORE VIDAL The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No Fi...
GORE VIDAL For half a century, photography has been the art form of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are...
GORE VIDAL As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to ill...
GORE VIDAL There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
GORE VIDAL If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives ...
GORE VIDAL Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But the...
GORE VIDAL Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues an...
GORE VIDAL Laughing at someone else is an excellent way of learning how to laugh at oneself; and questioning wh...
GORE VIDAL It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imag...
GORE VIDAL Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, ...
GORE VIDAL To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours,...
GORE VIDAL I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual live...
GORE VIDAL Half the American population no longer reads newspapers: plainly, they are the clever half.
GORE VIDAL Style is knowing who you are, what to say, and not giving a damn.
GORE VIDAL All the other candidates are making speeches about how much they have done for their country, which ...
GORE VIDAL Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence t...
GORE VIDAL It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we...
GORE VIDAL It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
GORE VIDAL I'm a born-again atheist.
GORE VIDAL Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes i...
GORE VIDAL There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
GORE VIDAL Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL It is true, as Sartre once wrote, referring to French Army atrocities in Algeria, that the real trag...
GORE VIDAL We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us th...
GORE VIDAL For every Scott Fitzgerald concerned with the precise word and the selection of relevant incident, t...
GORE VIDAL On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a deb...
GORE VIDAL Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.
GORE VIDAL Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust a...
GORE VIDAL I am a novelist turned temporary adventurer, and I chose to write television, movies and plays for m...
GORE VIDAL I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
GORE VIDAL Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
GORE VIDAL The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning th...
GORE VIDAL Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to ill...
GORE VIDAL There is only one party in the United States: the Property party... and it has two right wings: Repu...
GORE VIDAL To invent a war means that you've become a wartime president, and you can suspend much if not al...
GORE VIDAL By 1939, the Depression was back. Unemployment was huge. Roosevelt didn't have any quick fix. Re...
GORE VIDAL It's always best to stay out of other people's divorces. And their civil wars.
GORE VIDAL Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the t...
GORE VIDAL I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased beha...
GORE VIDAL Walter Lippmann suggests that the United States behaves like a society which thinks it is complete w...
GORE VIDAL Fortunately, our audiences are used to a kind of boredom in the theatre, and if the writer is skillf...
GORE VIDAL Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But the...
GORE VIDAL Jack Kennedy very much enjoyed Fletcher Knebel's thriller 'Seven Days in May,' later a f...
GORE VIDAL Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.
GORE VIDAL In August 1961, I visited President Kennedy at Hyannis Port. The Berlin Wall was going up, and he wa...
GORE VIDAL I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it's true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
GORE VIDAL The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
GORE VIDAL It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four per...
GORE VIDAL Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
GORE VIDAL No sooner does an American president take his oath of office than the speculation begins: Will he be...
GORE VIDAL That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.
GORE VIDAL Envy is the central fact of American life.
GORE VIDAL I didn't mean to spend my life writing American history, which should have been taught in the sc...
GORE VIDAL I'm not a conspiracy theorist - I'm a conspiracy analyst.
GORE VIDAL By the end of World War II, we were the most powerful and least damaged of the great nations. We als...
GORE VIDAL Temperamentally, I am suspicious of belonging to anything. When I ran for office, I debated seriousl...
GORE VIDAL The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself a...
GORE VIDAL For certain people after 50, litigation takes the place of sex.
GORE VIDAL It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.
GORE VIDAL Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
GORE VIDAL For certain people after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex.
GORE VIDAL Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
GORE VIDAL I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to ...
GORE VIDAL Young people are more hopeful at a certain age than adults, but I suspect that's glandular. As for c...
GORE VIDAL I might be President by now if it weren't for this 'queer' thing
GORE VIDAL Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.
GORE VIDAL Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualifi...
GORE VIDAL A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.
GORE VIDAL A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
GORE VIDAL All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
GORE VIDAL The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we ca...
GORE VIDAL Never have children, only grandchildren.
GORE VIDAL It makes no difference whom you vote for -- the two parties are really one party representing four p...
GORE VIDAL Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is ...
GORE VIDAL I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon. I cannot understand th...
GORE VIDAL Whenever a friend succeeds a little something in me dies.
GORE VIDAL Americans, in general, are ignorant, bigoted, and deeply unhappy with their declining incomes.
GORE VIDAL Television is now so desparately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
GORE VIDAL Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers...
GORE VIDAL There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
GORE VIDAL I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once...
GORE VIDAL I can't name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I'm told there are a fe...
GORE VIDAL I was raised in the Washington household of my grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, and h...
GORE VIDAL Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested...
GORE VIDAL I'm a fervent foe of water pollution, whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia's t...
GORE VIDAL He (Donald) is thorough and very careful not to take sides when there's insufficient evidence,
GORE VIDAL Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make se...
GORE VIDAL Rome... at its most decadent, had never thought of hiring an actor to go through the motions of bein...
GORE VIDAL Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in ...
GORE VIDAL Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself.
GORE VIDAL The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we ca...
GORE VIDAL All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
GORE VIDAL Didn't George Washington say, 'He who controls Afghanistan will carry New Jersey?'
GORE VIDAL On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congres...
GORE VIDAL Overcrowding in the cities is producing a collective madness in which irrational violence flourishes...
GORE VIDAL After the French Revolution, the world money power shifted from Paris to London. For three generatio...
GORE VIDAL Jews, blacks and homosexuals are despised by the Christian and Communist majorities of East and West...
GORE VIDAL The American press exists for one purpose only, and that is to convince Americans that they are livi...
GORE VIDAL To preserve the human race, it is now necessary to reorganize society. To this end, an Authority mus...
GORE VIDAL I don't even read most reviews, unless there is a potential lawsuit on view.
GORE VIDAL The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.
GORE VIDAL 'The Turner Diaries' is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseu...
GORE VIDAL Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life, a right action is consideration for the welfare of oth...
GORE VIDAL I like the way you always manage to state the obvious with a sense of real discovery.
GORE VIDAL The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning th...
GORE VIDAL What the Kinseyites and I had in common so long ago was the knowledge that homosexual and heterosexu...
GORE VIDAL There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexua...
GORE VIDAL In the German concentration camps, Jews wore yellow stars while homosexuals wore pink lambdas.
GORE VIDAL In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writ...
GORE VIDAL It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imag...
GORE VIDAL Trust a nitwit society like this one to think that there are only two categories - fag and straight.
GORE VIDAL Primarily, I am a prose writer with axes to grind, and the theatre is a good place to do the grindin...
GORE VIDAL Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fi...
GORE VIDAL Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.
GORE VIDAL What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?
GORE VIDAL If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives ...
GORE VIDAL These people [Bush Administration] are for the most part rip-off artists. Notice that they're all ga...
GORE VIDAL The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttres...
GORE VIDAL Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
GORE VIDAL I don't see us winning the war. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims."
GORE VIDAL roughly 80 percent of police work in the United States has to do with the regulation of our private ...
GORE VIDAL I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults
GORE VIDAL It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author'...
GORE VIDAL I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small Amer...
GORE VIDAL Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He ...
GORE VIDAL Although Americans justify their self-interest in moral terms, their true interest is never itself m...
GORE VIDAL There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic ...
GORE VIDAL I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on an...
GORE VIDAL I don't want anything. I don't want a job. I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I tu...
GORE VIDAL Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose....
GORE VIDAL A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking tha...
GORE VIDAL I'm a born-again atheist
GORE VIDAL We are the United States of Amnesia.
GORE VIDAL Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.
GORE VIDAL It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four per...
GORE VIDAL I am an obsessive rewriter, doing one draft and then another and another, usually five. In a way, I ...
GORE VIDAL That is New York. I pointed to the waterfront just ahead as if the city were mine.
GORE VIDAL For certain people, after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex
GORE VIDAL A court is the most depressing place on earth. Wherever there is a throne, one may observe in rich d...
GORE VIDAL The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But it has been much studied.
GORE VIDAL Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience al...
GORE VIDAL To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religi...
GORE VIDAL Since we have literally targeted our enemies, the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, rogues wil...
GORE VIDAL I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take ...
GORE VIDAL World War II made prosperous the United States, which had been undergoing a depression for a dozen y...
GORE VIDAL To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perce...
GORE VIDAL Remember, I'm West Point, where I was born. My father went there.
GORE VIDAL Europe began as the relatively empty, uncivilized Wild West of Asia; then the Western Hemisphere bec...
GORE VIDAL Everything's wrong on Wikipedia.
GORE VIDAL You hear all this whining going on, 'Where are our great writers?' The thing I might feel do...
GORE VIDAL Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and...
GORE VIDAL Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans [i.e., Christians] say they believe a...
GORE VIDAL Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.
GORE VIDAL Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel...
GORE VIDAL The Pentagon talks about our power to 'overkill' Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps for...
GORE VIDAL The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
GORE VIDAL In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king's death or upo...
GORE VIDAL My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees...
GORE VIDAL ...is not all philosophy but preparation for a serene dying?
GORE VIDAL The failure of Hellenism has been, largely, a matter of organization. Rome never tried to impose any...
GORE VIDAL But like so many others nowadays, poor Julian wanted to believe that man's life is profoundly more s...
GORE VIDAL