"Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale."
"The period of Prohibition - called the noble experiment - brought on the greatest breakdown of law and order the United States has known until today. I think there is a lesson here. Do not regulate the private morals of people. Do not tell them what they can take or not take. Because if you do, they will become angry and antisocial and they will get what they want from criminals who are able to work in perfect freedom because they have paid off the police."
3 likes
Source: Gore Vidal (1978). “Matters of fact and of fiction: essays, 1973-1976”, Vintage
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Gore Vidal
"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."
"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."
"There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all."
"The unfed mind devours itself."
"Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild."