Famous Quotes by Gore Vidal (35 Quotations)

Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.

Gore Vidal – [Opportunity]

On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.

Gore Vidal – [America]

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.

Gore Vidal – [Sex]

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

Gore Vidal – [Audiences]

Style is knowing who you are, what to say, and not giving a damn.

Gore Vidal – [Style]

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 – [Media]

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.

Gore Vidal – [Twentieth Century]

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.

Gore Vidal – [Theater]

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 – [Men]

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.

Gore Vidal – [Sexuality]

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.

Gore Vidal – [Bureaucracy]

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.

Gore Vidal – [Population]

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 – [Birds]

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

Gore Vidal – [Envy]

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

Gore Vidal – [Fiction]