Gore Vidal

“'The Turner Diaries' is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.”

“Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.”

“At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.”

“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.”

“From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out... It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion.”

“Europe began as the relatively empty, uncivilized Wild West of Asia; then the Western Hemisphere became the Wild West of Europe. Now the sun has set in our West and risen once more in the Ea...”

“Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.”

“Since we have literally targeted our enemies, the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, rogues will take out our cities, presumably from spaceships.”

“Every country should have at least one King Farouk.”

“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.”

“Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.”

“Fortunately, our audiences are used to a kind of boredom in the theatre, and if the writer is skillful, he will flatter them into thinking: 'Why, that's us up there, and aren't we - for all...”

“In August 1961, I visited President Kennedy at Hyannis Port. The Berlin Wall was going up, and he was about to begin a huge military buildup - reluctantly, or so he said, as he puffed on a c...”

“Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.”

“Primarily, I am a prose writer with axes to grind, and the theatre is a good place to do the grinding in. I prefer comedy to 'serious' drama because I believe one can get the ax sharper on t...”

“While campaigning, I got to know many high-school teachers, and let me say that the good ones are the unsung heroes of our society, and the bad ones are the gravediggers.”

“Love is not my bag.”

“Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.”

“If you are a Representative and want to be a Senator, you must be careful not to do anything which might upset the various forces you need to harness to get elected.”

“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.”