Gore Vidal Life Quotations

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

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

I didn't mean to spend my life writing American history, which should have been taught in the schools, but I saw no alternative but to taking it on myself. I could think of a lot of cheerier things I'd rather be doing than analyzing George Washington and Aaron Burr. But it came to pass, that was my job, so I did it.

Envy is the central fact of American life.

Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life, a right action is consideration for the welfare of others.

I was raised in the Washington household of my grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, and have known politicians intimately all my life.

You cannot deprive somebody of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, because that is a right - constitutional right.

After adolescence, if one's life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.

It's odd to meet a rather elderly man who says, 'I've been reading you all my life.' It makes you feel a slight chill.

I began life as an absolute monarchist - on condition, of course, that I be that monarch.

Since no one can ever know for certain whether or not his own view of life is the correct one, it is absolutely impossible for him to know if someone else's is the wrong one.

What is there to say, finally, except that pain is bad and pleasure good, life all, death nothing.

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