Gore Vidal Thinking Quotations

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.

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.

I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place

In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.

I think the Chinese will say the hell with you and pull their money out of the United States. That's the end of our wars.

It doesn't actually make any difference whether the President is Republican or Democrat. The genius of the American ruling class is that it has been able to make the people think that they have had something to do with the electing of presidents for 200 years when they've had absolutely nothing to say about the candidates or the policies or the way the country is run.

Nothing is durable, I think anybody who thinks sex is durable is going to have a lot of grief.

These people [Bush Administration] are for the most part rip-off artists. Notice that they're all gas and oil men from Cheney, to the two Bushes; I think Rumsfeld also.

I think since Watergate people are interested in what the past of this country was really like.

I'd still like to be the President, of course, and I think the best way to do that would be to raise an army and seize the Capital. This strikes me as true democracy.

Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

I'm devoted to promiscuity, and always have been. I believe the more you do, the better it is for you. I'm a great health nut, and sex is, I think, absolutely marvelous for the whole system; tones you up.

The Gores, I think, are a bit brighter than the Bushes, historically speaking.

I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that's the most important thing there is for middle-class people.

I suppose that one is always tempted to challenge those who think that they and they alone possess the truth or the way or the key to the mystery.

It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made.

How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It's the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It's been two hundred years at it. It's superb.

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.

The period of Prohibition - called the noble experiment - brought on the greatest breakdown of law and order the United States has known until today. I think there is a lesson here. Do not regulate the private morals of people. Do not tell them what they can take or not take. Because if you do, they will become angry and antisocial and they will get what they want from criminals who are able to work in perfect freedom because they have paid off the police.

The oligarchs think that the people are both dangerous and stupid. Their point is moot. But we do know that the oligarchs are a good deal more dangerous to the polity than the people at large.

I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality.

It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time—now, too, I suppose—actually thought that at a given moment in history two human beings had evolved to a higher state than that of all the gods that ever were or ever will be. This is titanism, as the Greeks would say. This is madness.

Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

[Norman Mailer] is against masturbation, he's against homosexuality. He believes that murder is essentially sexual. I think he's rather an anthology of all the darkest American traits.

Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.

I am glad my life is coming to an end. To think that it might last another five hundred years, now that would be terrible, in my case.