117 quotes
Americans are farcical when it comes to force majeure and money!
Two things that they worship.
You can't expect a democracy from a society like this.
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2013)
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.
The hatred Americans have for their own government is pathological, if understandable. At one level it is simply thwarted greed: since our religion is making a buck, giving a part of that buck to any government is an act against nature.
KRETON: My dear, you must marry him too. I’m sure the three of you would make a lovely couple.
Visit to a Small Planet (1957)
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.
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992)
In any case, rather like priests who have forgotten the meaning of the prayers they chant, we shall go on for quite a long time talking of books and writing books, pretending all the while not to notice that the church is empty and the parishioners have gone elsewhere to attend other gods, perhaps in silence or with new words.
Matters of Fact and Fiction : Essays 1973–1976 (1978)
After the script was ready there were the usual trials, delays, problems of temperament: each participant confident the others had gone into secret league to contrive his professional ruin (and on occasion cabals did flourish…the theater is a child’s world).
Visit to a Small Planet (1957)
POWERS: Well, good morning Mr. Kreton, and how are we today?
KRETON: Absolutely wallowing in the twentieth century.
Visit to a Small Planet (1957)
The reason no one has yet been able to come up with a good word to describe the homosexualist (sometimes known as gay, fag, queer, etc.) is because he does not exist. The human race is divided into male and female. Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex, many don't; many respond to both. This plurality is the fact of our nature and not worth fretting about.
The Second American Revolution (1983)
I complain about the United States not being Athens. I certainly say we are a very good Roman republic, and the lies are based upon the most advanced techniques of advertising, which is the only art form my country has ever created — the television commercial — and we sell soap and presidents in the same fashion. Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back.
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2013)
Anais Nin gave me my most original, or so I thought, creation.As I read Incest, I realized that something which I had always taken to be unique, the voice of Myra Breckinridge, was actually that of Anaïs in all the flowing megalomania of the diaries. Of course, I had not read the diaries then, but even so, if only for that one thundering voice, I am forever in her debt.
Palimpsest : A Memoir (1995)
They already had contingency plans ready in case of terrorism, violence, whatever, which they had inherited from Clinton, who had put together some terrible legislation after Timothy McVeigh blew up the building in Oklahoma City.
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2013)
Lennon was somebody who was a born enemy of those who govern the United States. He was everything they hated. So I just say that he represented life, and is admirable; and Mr. Nixon and Mr. Bush represent death, and that is a bad thing.
the documentary The U.S. vs John Lennon (2006)
Private lives should be no business of the State. The State is bad enough as it is. It cannot educate or medicate or feed the people; it cannot do anything but kill the people. No State like that do we want prying into our private lives.
Quoted in The Guardian, by Ryszard Kapuściński, in "Vidal salon" (5 May 2007)
Constantine was never a true Galilean; he merely used Christianity to extend his dominion over the world. He was a shrewd professional soldier, badly educated and not in the least interested in philosophy, though some perverse taste in him was hugely satisfied by doctrinal disputes; the mad haggling of bishops fascinated him.
Julian (1964)
Never have children, only grandchildren.
Misattributed