Gore Vidal Quotes About Politics

Quotes about: Politics

• 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

  Country, Objectivity, Media

  Gore Vidal (1992). “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire”
• 

  Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

  Gore Vidal

  People, Political, Voting

  FaceBook post by Gore Vidal from Jul 26, 2011

• We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic.

  Gore Vidal

  Democracy, Earth, Republic

  "Gore Vidal and the Mind of the Terrorist". Interview with Ramona Koval, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio National, November 2001.

• Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.

  Gore Vidal

  Sarcastic, Book, Writing

  FaceBook post by Gore Vidal from Nov 18, 2010

• It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.

  Gore Vidal

  Party, Two, Differences

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

  Gore Vidal

  Issues, Political, Historical

  FaceBook post by Gore Vidal from May 03, 2011

• We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.

  Gore Vidal

  United States, Politics, Remember

  Gore Vidal (2004). “Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia”, p.7, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

• Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

  Gore Vidal

  Democracy, Politics, Form

  FaceBook post by Gore Vidal from May 21, 2014

• 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.

  Gore Vidal

  Communication, Cities, People

  Gore Vidal (2004). “Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia”, p.52, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

• Politics is made up of two words: "Poli," which is Greek for "many," and "tics," which are bloodsucking insects.

  Gore Vidal

  Blood, Two, Greek

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. "We have a single system," he wrote, and "in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses."

  Gore Vidal

  Party, Wings, Two

  Gore Vidal (2004). “Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia”, p.50, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

• By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

  Gore Vidal

  Men, Presidential, Political

  "Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 2013.

• It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of evasions: history as sociology, leaders as teachers, bland benevolence as a motive force, when, finally, power is an end to itself, and the instinctive urge to prevail the most important single human trait, the necessary force without which no city was built, no city destroyed.

  Gore Vidal

  Teacher, Simple, Sea

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

  Gore Vidal

  Failure, Envy, Political

  Quoted in Newport (R.I.) Daily News, 3 Nov. 1978

• Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.

  Gore Vidal

  People, Political, Fifty

• Our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own.

  Gore Vidal

  Government, People, Done

  Gore Vidal (2002). “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated, Causes of Conflict in the Last Empire”, p.10, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

• Rome ... at its most decadent, had never thought of hiring an actor to go through the motions of being an emperor while the Praetorian Guard ruled.

  Gore Vidal

  Rome, Political, Actors

  Gore Vidal (1998). “The American presidency”, Common Courage Pr

• Liberal comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon.

  Gore Vidal

  Latin, Mean, Men

  Gore Vidal (1992). “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire”

• This might explain why Obama gave billions to Wall Street crooks, and dragged the Iraq and Afghan wars on and on.
  Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing... We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns.

  Gore Vidal

  Wall, War, Rights

• You will be favourable to Burr, and so must fail because the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earth, Washington the greatest man that ever lived, Burr the wickedest, and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the reader's attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness.

  Gore Vidal

  Country, Love You, Mean

• Ronald Reagan: a triumph of the embalmer's art.

  Gore Vidal

  Art, Triumph, Politics

  Quoted in Observer, 26 Apr. 1981

• The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.

  Gore Vidal

  Giving, President, Behaviour

  "Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11" by Sunder Katwala, www.theguardian.com. October 26, 2002.

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