"Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale."
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Quote collection
Gore Vidal quotes (page 1 of 23)
457 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam - good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system."
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"There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all."
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"The unfed mind devours itself."
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"Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild."
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"It doesn't actually make any difference whether the President is Republican or Democrat. The genius of the American ruling class is that it has been able to make the people think that they have had something to do with the electing of presidents for 200 years when they've had absolutely nothing to say about the candidates or the policies or the way the country is run."
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"We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing."
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"Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin."
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"Write something, even if it's just a suicide note."
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"The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal -- God is the Omnipotent Father -- hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates."
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"The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie answers questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare."
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"Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the American political elite from the beginning."
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"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."
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"The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so."
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"You know, I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country."
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"That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president."
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"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."
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"As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action."
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"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half."
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