Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Do nothing that is not natural - and ritual is natural - and all will be for the best.

Choice |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

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

Life | Life | Words |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

It is curious how little interested we are in the sexual desires of those who do not attract us.

History | People | Thought | Will | Think | Thought |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The reason no one has yet been able to come up with a good word to describe the homosexualist (sometimes known as gay, fag, queer, etc.) is because he does not exist. The human race is divided into male and female. Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex, many don't; many respond to both. This plurality is the fact of our nature and not worth fretting about.

Public |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Before the cards that one is dealt by life are the cards that fate has dealt: one's family.

Balance | Life | Life | Nothing | Reason |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.

Authority | Family | Nature | Politics |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

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 militarized republic. The founding fathers hated two things, one was monarchy and the other was democracy, they gave us a constitution that saw to it we will have neither. I don't know how wise they were.

Important | Life | Life | Object | World |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

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.

Obsession | Politics | Understand |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.

Age | Culture | Evil | Father | God | Loathing | Obedience | Politics | God | Old |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, "Well, so-and-so will like this," which you do when you're younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.

Power |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.

Fate | Life | Life | Fate |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

If we succeed in cleaning up the environment, we donÂ’t have enough money for war. But Americans are basically pro-war. WeÂ’re a violent people and we like it.

Enough | Life | Life |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general "They tell lies," he used to say with wonder, "even when they don't have to".

Family | Life | Life | Sense |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

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.

Battle | Criticism | Day | Life | Life | Literature | Nothing | Order | Present | Will |

Euripedes NULL

A man who has been in danger, when he comes out of it forgets his fears, And sometimes he forgets his promises.

Choice |

Euripedes NULL

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.

Action | Happy | Life | Life | Mortal |

Euripedes NULL

Who knows but life be that which men call death, and death what men call life?

Life | Life |

Euripedes NULL

Who so neglects learning in his youth loses the past and is dead to the future.

Death | Life | Life |