Gore Vidal (1925–2012,) originally Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, Jr., was an American novelist, essayist, dramatist, and polemicist. A frequent guest on television opinion programs, he was also celebrated for his outspoken political opinions and his witty and satirical observations.
Vidal was born in West Point, New York. His first novel, Williwaw (1946,) was based on his experiences serving in the United States Army Reserve Corps during World War II. The City and the Pillar (1948,) a candid account of homosexuality, was a bestseller.
Vidal established himself as a novelist with satirical comedies such as Myra Breckenridge (1968,) its sequel Myron (1974,) and Creation (1981.) His political novels include Washington D.C. (1967,) and the trilogy Burr (1976,) 1876 (1976,) and Lincoln (1984.)
Vidal was also an actor and wrote for television, film, and the stage. A writer of teleplays, he turned briefly to the theatre in 1957 and wrote the successful adaptations Visit to a Small Planet (1957) and The Best Man (1960,) a satire on American politics.
Vidal’s plays include On the March to the Sea (1961,) Weekend (1968,) and An Evening with Richard Nixon and… (1972.) His memoirs are Palimpsest (1995) and Point to Point Navigation (2006.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Gore Vidal
Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Criticism
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
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Language
In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you’re a great writer, you must say that you are.
—Gore Vidal
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: America
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Punishment
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.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Media
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.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Cynicism
There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Bureaucracy
It is not enough to succeed, others must fail.
—Gore Vidal
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Authors & Writing, Fiction
It makes no difference whom you vote for—the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Voting
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.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Facts
A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Theater
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing, Writers
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Twentieth Century
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Praise, Audiences
Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Speech
Style is knowing who you are, what to say, and not giving a damn.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Style
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Americans
It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Space
For half a century, photography has been the art form of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? To the designer of the camera? To the finger on the button? To the law of averages?
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Photography
There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master the victory cry of the great ape as it issued from the androgynous chest of Johnny Weissmuller, to the accompaniment of thousands of arms and legs snapping during attempts to swing from tree to tree in the backyards of the Republic.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Men
The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Money, Wealth
To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Birds
Major Barkinson had a sure method of foretelling weather, or anything else for that matter. He would, for instance, select a certain patch of sky and then count slowly to three; if, during that time, no sea gull crossed the patch of sky, the thing he wanted would come true
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Weather
When Ronald Reagan’s career in show business came to an end, he was hired to impersonate, first, a California governor and then an American president who would reduce taxes for his employers, the Southern and Western New Rich, much of whose money came from the defence industries. There is nothing unusual about this arrangement. All recent presidents have had their price-tags.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Presidency
Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Teaching
It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Power
What is a long life but a nightmare of endless repetition?
—Gore Vidal
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.
—Gore Vidal
Topics: Democracy
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