Gore Vidal

"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."

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."

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

"I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out."

"I have never been an eavesdropper, even in childhood. Not from any sense of virtue but because I really do not want to know what people think of me or, to be precise, what they say of me - often a different matter. I can usually imagine the unpleasant judgements, for we are what others needs us to be. That is why our reputations change so often and so drastically, reflecting no particular change in us, merely a change in the mood of those who observe us."

"A babble of words that no one understands now fills the airwaves, and language loses all meaning as we sink slowly, mindlessly, into herstory rather than history because most rapists are men, aren't they?"

"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."

"Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world."

"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."

"I'm a born-again atheist."

"presidents, when not outright telling lies, feel obliged to shade the truth most of the time. This is called politics; when a president lies successfully, he is called a statesman."

"Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil."

"Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house."

"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."

"Never have children, only grandchildren."

"The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so."

"It is of no consequence what others think of you. What matters is what you think of them. That is how you live your life."

"With modern technology it is the easiest of tasks for a media, guided by a narrow group of political manipulators, to speak constantly of democracy and freedom while urging regime changes everywhere on earth but at home. A curious condition of a republic based roughly onthe original Roman model is that it cannot allow true political parties to share in government. What then is a true political party: one that is based firmly in the interest of a class be it workers or fox hunters. Officially we have two parties which are in fact wings of a common party of property with two right wings. Corporate wealth finances each. Since the property party controls every aspect of media they have had decades to create a false reality for a citizenry largely uneducated by public schools that teach conformity with an occasional advanced degree in consumerism."

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

"As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days."