Top 400 Gore Vidal Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “I do not admire ‘the people,’ as such. No one really does. Their folk wisdom is usually false, their instincts predatory. Even their sense of survival – so highly developed in the individual – goes berserk in the mass. A crowd is a fool.”

— Gore Vidal

252. “Let the dust take me when the adventure’s done and I shall make the dust glitter for all eternity with my marvelous fury.”

— Gore Vidal

253. “In the town of Ravella, where I have a house, when the Supreme Court said that an act of sodomy, as they describe it, could not be committed between a man and his wife, the entire square burst into laughter.”

— Gore Vidal

254. “In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.”

— Gore Vidal

255. “These are two opposing forces, and whenever I am in active politics, I stop writing. And when I’m writing, I don’t politick.”

— Gore Vidal

256. “The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true. Since I ought to be arrogant, impressed with my social position, overwhelmed by my beauty, therefore I am.”

— Gore Vidal

257. “Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.”

— Gore Vidal

258. “At a certain age, you have to live near good medical care – if, that is, you’re going to continue. You always have the option of not continuing, which, I fear, is sometimes nobler.”

— Gore Vidal

259. “Precocious talents mature slowly if at all.”

— Gore Vidal

260. “This separation was absolute in our original Republic. But the sky-godders do not give up easily. In the 1950s they actually got the phrase In God We Trust onto the currency, in direct violation of the First Amendment.”

— Gore Vidal

261. “In Southern Europe, we have, of course, very bad governments.”

— Gore Vidal

262. “As Seward did not understand the reference, he did not ask for an explanation. In any case, he had a constitutional dislike of being told things that he did not know, as opposed to ferreting them out.”

— Gore Vidal

263. “To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.”

— Gore Vidal

264. “As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority.”

— Gore Vidal

265. “I believe it’s my pastoral duty to convert friends to atheism.”

— Gore Vidal

266. “There is no such thing as a true account of anything.”

— Gore Vidal

267. “Americans worship the Constitution but do not observe it.”

— Gore Vidal

268. “I don’t deny or affirm anything. I’m not very personal.”

— Gore Vidal

269. “If you’re a critic of the rulers of the United States, you are either demonized, or you are trivialized by the press, and they do a very good job of making you into a non-person or a ridiculous person.”

— Gore Vidal

270. “People in my situation get to read about themselves whether they want to or not. It’s generally wrong. Or oversimplified – which is sometimes useful.”

— Gore Vidal

271. “You hear all this whining going on, ‘Where are our great writers?’ The thing I might feel doleful about is: ‘Where are the readers?’”

— Gore Vidal

272. “I might become an ascetic, live in India. A little rice is about the best I can do now.”

— Gore Vidal

273. “Celebrities are invariably celebrity-mad, just as liars always believe liars.”

— Gore Vidal

274. “Of course his dust would be absorbed in other living things and to that degree at least he would exist again, though it was plain enough that the specific combination which was he would never exist again.”

— Gore Vidal

275. “Gentlemen are not supposed to tell the truth about their sex lives, nor are ladies, for that matter. Of course Clinton lied – as would anybody in his position.”

— Gore Vidal

276. “I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that’s how one starts. Or I started.”

— Gore Vidal

277. “We have a great deal to learn from Scandinavia and a great deal to be alarmed at from the Mediterranean.”

— Gore Vidal

278. “I have always found men quite fathomable. They look entirely to their own interest.”

— Gore Vidal

279. “Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make sense out of the senseless, to explain things we find inexplicable.”

— Gore Vidal

280. “There are a great many people who have a vested interest in maintaining the stupidity of the American public.”

— Gore Vidal

281. “We wear the purple.”

— Gore Vidal

282. “I realize,” said Sumner, “that the press is hardly reliable.” Lincoln turned from the window; suddenly, he grinned. “Oh, yes, they are. They lie. And then they re-lie. So they are nothing if not re-lie-able.”

— Gore Vidal

283. “I’m in Hollywood right now, surrounded by nothing but the sons and grandsons of movie stars.”

— Gore Vidal

284. “How hungrily we read about ourselves!”

— Gore Vidal

285. “Sex was a great no-no for Americans, so that was obviously an attraction to the writers, and since sex is a great part of most people’s lives, it’s a great subject.”

— Gore Vidal

286. “Vitriolic is a needless and malign attack on something, excessive attack on something. It is a rather pointless thing to do.”

— Gore Vidal

287. “It is reasonable to assume that, by and large, what is not read now will not be read, ever. It is also reasonable to assume that practically nothing that is read now will be read later.”

— Gore Vidal

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

— Gore Vidal

289. “I liked the trichotomy, that’s the only thing I ever liked.”

— Gore Vidal

290. “When the Presidential virus attacks the system there is a tendency for the patient in his fever to move from the Right or the Left to the Center where the curative votes are.”

— Gore Vidal

291. “To be categorized is, simply, to be enslaved.”

— Gore Vidal

292. “I was brought up to believe that what is out-of-doors should stay there and not be encouraged in any way.”

— Gore Vidal

293. “Americans are not only a less homogenous population than we were when we were 3 million ex-colonists, but we’re less educated. On top of that, we have constant misinformation and manipulation by media.”

— Gore Vidal

294. “If you’re not part of that club, as I certainly am not, you are not presidential.”

— Gore Vidal

295. “All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious.”

— Gore Vidal

296. “I come from the highest class of all. I am a third-generation celebrity.”

— Gore Vidal

297. “I don’t seem to be cynical to myself but how what I say goes down with others is their problem. I’m realistic.”

— Gore Vidal

298. “Many years ago, there used to be something called ‘conflict of interest.’ No longer, I’m afraid. Today, we all bathe in the same river.”

— Gore Vidal

299. “I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it’s too discouraging.”

— Gore Vidal

300. “The American vice is explanation.”

— Gore Vidal