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" By 1939, the Depression was back. Unemployment was huge. Roosevelt didn't have any quick fix. Remember, the New Deal, Works Progress Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps - all that happened years before. Roosevelt was riding a storm. "

Gore Vidal

Progress

Depression

Storm

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" I never wanted to be a writer. I mean, that's the last thing I wanted. "

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

" Walter Lippmann suggests that the United States behaves like a society which thinks it is complete with no more to accomplish; that, for better or worse, we are what we are, and the only danger to our comfort is external. "

" Americans are future-minded to the point of obsession. We are impatient at living in the present. Tomorrow is bound to be better... next year, next century, always what might be rather than what is. This trait in us makes for 'progress;' it also makes for a continuing dissatisfaction. "

" 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 our little foibles - pretty nice guys and gals?' "

" The unfed mind devours itself. "

Gore Vidal

Mind

Itself

" Temperamentally, I am suspicious of belonging to anything. When I ran for office, I debated seriously whether or not to run as an independent because I was not eager to be saddled with the Democratic Party, because any party label is committing. "

" It is true, as Sartre once wrote, referring to French Army atrocities in Algeria, that the real tragedy in our time is that any of us can be, interchangeably, victim or torturer. "

" There is a terrible garrulousness in most American writing, legacy of the old Frontier. "

" Like most readers, I tend to skip the acknowledgements at the beginnings of books: the 'To-My-Wife-Without-Whose-Invaluable-Assistance' kind of thing. "

Gore Vidal

Beginnings

Kind

" I never said I was gay, because I don't think anyone is. "

" Actually, I can't remember when I was not writing. "

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

" Anybody who is stupid enough to want to be remembered deserves to be forgotten right now. "

" I was the most famous kid in the United States. That was 1936. "

" 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. "

Gore Vidal

American

War

" There is only one party in the United States: the Property party... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. "

" Most of our writers tend to be recorders. "

" It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. "

" As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. "

" 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. "

" For the record, I'm a Second World War veteran and served in the Pacific. "

" Remember, I'm West Point, where I was born. My father went there. "

" The United States is the only civilized country in the world to class its teachers at the bottom of the social scale. "

" 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. "

" Jack Kennedy very much enjoyed Fletcher Knebel's thriller 'Seven Days in May,' later a film. The story: a jingo based on the real-life Admiral Arthur Radford plans a military coup to take over the White House. "

" When I say 'president,' I still mean Roosevelt - wisely, I think. "

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

" Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery. "

" Baseball is the favorite American sport because it's so slow. Any idiot can follow it. And just about any idiot can play it. "