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
I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).
Darkness | Death | Defeat | Earth | Failure | Hope | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mystery | Nothing | Power | Reading | Sadness | Will | Failure |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
It is not enough merely to win; others must lose.
Future | Hope | Television | Will |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Am I my brother's keeper? [That frequently asked question] has never been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society. Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe myself.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I believe there's something very salutary in, say, beating up a gay-bashing policeman. Preferably one fights through the courts, through the laws, through education, but if at a neighborhood level violence is necessary, I'm all for violence. It's the only thing Americans understand.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Nothing that ever was changes. Yet nothing that is can ever be the same as what went before.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party...and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt—until recently... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.
People |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands.
Human race | Persuasion | Problems | Race | Guilty |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
There is nothing that helps the Socialist Party so much as receiving an occasional deathblow. The oftener it is killed the more active, the more energetic, the more powerful it becomes.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime, culminating in Ronald Reagan's most popular gesture, the smashing of the air-controllers' union. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow.
Good | Human race | People | Race | Regard | Religion | System | World |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class.
Barbarism | Capitalism | Courage | Faith | Hope | Slavery | Spirit |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Asked who was the worst president, he responded, Oh, there were so many of them. Certainly the silliest was Reagan. The most empty. [George H.W.] Bush is in the running for the worst.
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
There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.
People |