This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
But it wasnÂ’t until I was well into my twenties and had Jewish friends that I heard about guilt.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.
Giving | Government | Religion | Government |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
There is not one human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy
The Senate is the last primitive society in the world. We still worship the elders of the tribe and honor the territorial imperative.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I came from a guiltless world as far as sex went — the world I grew up in was Southern, Washington and political. Everyone in my world did absolutely everything. I am speaking now of the Thirties. No one I knew denied himself anything. Of course, there was a great deal of care about appearances. People in public life had to be careful.
Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.
Time |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
We are the United States of amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.
Time |
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.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I have always found men quite fathomable. They look entirely to their own interest.
Imagination | Important | Novels | Think |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth.
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
Basler finds my Lincoln the 'phoniest historical novel I have ever had the pleasure of reading.'... Also, 'more than half the book could never have happened as told.' Unfortunately, he doesn't say which half. If I knew, we could then cut it free from the phony half and publish the result as Basler's Vidal's Lincoln.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I have been reading Plotinus all evening. He has the power to sooth me; and I find his sadness curiously comforting. Even when he writes: Life here with the things of earth is a sinking, a defeat, a failure of the wing. The wing has indeed failed. One sinks. Defeat is certain. Even as I write these lines, the lamp wick sputters to an end, and the pool of light in which I sit contracts. Soon the room will be dark. One has always feared that death would be like this. But what else is there? With Julian, the light went, and now nothing remains but to let the darkness come, and hope for a new sun and another day, born of timeÂ’s mystery and a manÂ’s love of life.