Quotes by
Gore Vidal |
1925-2012 , American writer
American novelist, playwright, and essayist, noted for his irreverent and intellectually adroit novels. Also, known for his patrician manner, epigrammatic wit, and polished style of writing. | 28 quotes | 2,401 visits |
Quotations
| • | Write something, even if it's just a suicide note. 44 |
| • | By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over. 15 |
| • | Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60. 6 |
| • | Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn. 6 |
| • | Half the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for President — the same half? 5 |
| • | Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies. 5 |
| • | Modern Christianity is a encyclopaedia of traditional superstition. 5 |
| • | Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television. 5 |
| • | A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. 5 |
| • | Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family. 4 |
| • | The unfed mind devours itself. 4 |
| • | There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices. 4 |
| • | The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since. 4 |
| • | It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. 4 |
| • | Envy is the central fact of American life. 4 |
| • | Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors. 4 |
| • | There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise. 3 |
| • | On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died. 3 |
| • | Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel. 3 |
| • | American society, literary or lay, tends to be humorless. What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke? 3 |
| • | 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. 3 |
| • | I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair. 3 |
| • | Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange. 3 |
| • | Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it’s gossip with some point to it. That’s why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true. 3 |
| • | Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that’s the end of the constitution as a working machine. |
| • | The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes. |
Funny Quotes
| • | I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults. 5 |
| • | The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so. 5 |
