Gore Vidal quotes

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.

Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He understood how the economy works. But because he had used various dodges to stay out of the Vietnam War, he came to office ill at ease with the military.

We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us the truth about anything, serving their corporate masters who have other plans to dominate us.

Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

I am a novelist turned temporary adventurer, and I chose to write television, movies and plays for much the same reason that Henry Morgan selected the Spanish Main for his peculiar - and not dissimilar - sphere of operations.

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

Some have deplored Lincoln's indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off.

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

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

My father once said something very shrewd about me to a woman journalist who had told him how courageous she thought I was for always speaking my mind. My father said, 'If you couldn't care less what anyone says about you, then it's not courage.'

While campaigning, I got to know many high-school teachers, and let me say that the good ones are the unsung heroes of our society, and the bad ones are the gravediggers.

I was the most famous kid in the United States. That was 1936.

Policemen are seldom tried for their crimes, or indeed, held responsible for what they do, which disturbs the peace and causes distress among the orderly.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

Friends, there is no Left in American politics.

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

I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it's true that I am, by nature, belligerent.

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.

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

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

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

Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He understood how the economy works. But because he had used various dodges to stay out of the Vietnam War, he came to office ill at ease with the military.

'The Turner Diaries' is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.