Gore Vidal Creation Quotes

In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death

The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men. The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small yes at the center of a vast no.

I say his version because there is no such thing as a true account of anything. Each sees the world from his own vantage point. Needless to say, a throne is not the best place from which to view anything except the backs of prostrate men.

Is it not better for a man never to have been born?" "Certaintly not" The response was brisk. "Just to be able to study the sky is reason enough to be alive." "Unfortunately, I can't see the sky." "Then listen to music.

All over Greece, strangers of a certain age will greet one another with the question, "And where were you and what did you do when Xerxes came to Marathon?" Then they exchange lies.

...,I have never visited any city in the world where I was not told that I just missed the golden age. I seem never to be on time." Cyrus Sitema

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.

I would not be surprised if elephants are more intelligent than human beings. After all, their heads are larger than ours, and the fact that they do not speak might well be an indication of superiority.

[T]hose who are not by nature hunters side with the hunted.

Democritus is studying philosophy here at Athens. This means that he delights in quarrels.

I said it. I like to quote myself. I am not modest.

All things turn out ill, in the end. But that is the ill nature of things, to end.

Each affair began as though the creation of the world was to be reenacted, and each usually ended in less time than it took the Old Testament Creator to put up the sky. (62)

No man ever knows when he is happy; he can only know when he was happy.

There is no need for us to know what we cannot know. There is so much for us to deal with here.

In 1970, I wrote in the New York Times, of all uncongenial places, It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect—good or bad—the drug will have on the taker. This will require heroic honesty. Don’t say that marijuana is addictive or dangerous when it is neither, as millions of people know—unlike “speed,” which kills most unpleasantly, or heroin, which can be addictive and difficult to kick. Along with exhortation and warning, it might be good for our citizens to recall (or learn for the first time) that the United States was the creation of men who believed that each person has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbors’ pursuit of happiness (that his neighbor’s idea of happiness is persecuting others does confuse matters a bit).