"Art is not a democracy, in fact art is the enemy of democracy"
Read quote
6 likes
Quote collection
Gore Vidal quotes (page 10 of 23)
457 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I wanted to be a politician and a movie star. But I was born a writer. If you're born that, you can't change it. You're going to do it whether you want to or not.~"
Read quote
6 likes
"Politically, of course, it's to the Right, but then the whole country is to the Right."
Read quote
6 likes
"USA is suffering between imperialists and anti-imperialists. That is the situation. The most powerful country in the world is on its way back to the Stone Age."
Read quote
6 likes
"Universities are filled with poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and those others who (through what seems to be have been discretion) made it."
Read quote
6 likes
"Sex was a great no-no for Americans, so that was obviously an attraction to the writers, and since sex is a great part of most people's lives, it's a great subject."
Read quote
6 likes
"I'm devoted to promiscuity, and always have been. I believe the more you do, the better it is for you. I'm a great health nut, and sex is, I think, absolutely marvelous for the whole system; tones you up."
Read quote
6 likes
"History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place."
Read quote
6 likes
"Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family."
Read quote
6 likes
"At a certain age, you have to live near good medical care — if, that is, you're going to continue. You always have the option of not continuing, which, I fear, is sometimes nobler."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"In the First Amendment to the Constitution, the Founders made it clear that this was not to be a sky-god nation with a national religion like that of England, from whom we had just separated. It is curious how little understood this amendment is-yes, everyone has a right to worship any god he chooses but he does not have the right to impose his beliefs on others who do not happen to share in his superstitions and taboos."
Read quote
6 likes
"Astronauts: rotarians in outer space."
Read quote
6 likes
"...I'm no longer the scales most lovers are, weighing the deeds and gifts and treasures proffered against those received or stolen from the other, trying always to bring into fatal balance two separate things."
Read quote
6 likes
"When you come from a family that has been political, and I was brought up by my grandfather in the Senate, my father was in Roosevelt's Cabinet, this is not the class that produces writers or reflective people."
Read quote
6 likes
"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..."
Read quote
6 likes
"Laughing at someone else is an excellent way of learning how to laugh at oneself; and questioning what seem to be the absurd beliefs of another group is a good way of recognizing the potential absurdity of many of one's own cherished beliefs."
Read quote
6 likes
"Altruism is a brief phase through which some adolescents must pass. It is rather like acne. Happily, as with acne, only a few are permanently scarred."
Read quote
6 likes
"Heaven's sakes, there's only one party which I call the Property Party. It's got two wings. One is called the "Republican" and one is called "Democratic." It is the same party so it makes no difference whether a Democrat's elected or a Republican's elected. The ownership remains the same."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes