Gore Vidal's Quotes

The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.

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.

What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.

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

The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.

Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

A good deed never goes unpunished.

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

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

Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

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

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

I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.

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

We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.

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

Never have children, only grandchildren.

Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.

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

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

In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.