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Famous Gore Vidal Quotes

“I complain about the United States not being Athens. I certainly say we are a very good Roman republic, and the lies are based upon the most advanced techniques of advertising, which is the only art form my country has ever created—the television commercial—and we sell soap and presidents in the same fashion. Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back.”

LyingPoliticsLiesLiarsPolitical Chicanery
Book:Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia
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“With modern technology it is the easiest of tasks for a media, guided by a narrow group of political manipulators, to speak constantly of democracy and freedom while urging regime changes everywhere on earth but at home. A curious condition of a republic based roughly on the original Roman model is that it cannot allow true political parties to share in government. What then is a true political party: one that is based firmly in the interest of a class be it workers or fox hunters. Officially we have two parties which are in fact wings of a common party of property with two right wings. Corporate wealth finances each. Since the property party controls every aspect of media they have had decades to create a false reality for a citizenry largely uneducated by public schools that teach conformity with an occasional advanced degree in consumerism.”

GovernmentFreedomEducationClassPowerConsumerismPolitical PartiesRepublicansDemocratsFalse RealityPublic Schools
Author:Gore Vidal
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“It is ironic-rouse the limpest adjective-that a government as spontaneously tyrannous and callous as ours should, over the years, have come yo care so much about our health as it endlessly tests and retests commercial drugs available in other lands while arresting those who take "hard" drugs on the potential ground that they are bad for the user's health. One is touched by their concern- touched and dubious. After all, these same compassionate guardians of our well-being have sternly, year in and year out, refused to allow us to have what every other First World country simply takes for granted, a national health service.”

PoliticsHealthDrugs
Book:Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
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“If one starts with the anatomical difference, which even a patriarchal Viennese novelist was able to see was destiny, then one begins to understand why men and women don't get on very well within marriage, or indeed in any exclusive sort of long-range sexual relationship. He is designed to make as many babies as possible with as many different women as he can get his hands on, while she is designed to take time off from her busy schedule as astronaut or role model to lay an egg and bring up the result. Male and female are on different sexual tracks, and that cannot be changed by the Book or any book. Since all our natural instincts are carefully perverted from birth, it is no wonder that we tend to be, if not all of us serial killers, killers of our own true nature.”

Sex
Author:Gore Vidal
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“Por supuesto, habia escuchado esos interminables versos del ciego Homero: afirman que en cierta oportunidad los griegos atacaron Troya (ahora se llama Sigeo y pertenece a nuestro imperio porque la esposa de un reyezuelo griego se había escapado con un joven troyano. Para cualquiera que conozca Sigeo,y también a los griegos, es evidente que éstos deseaban controlar la entrada al mar Negro desde siempre, así como las ricas tierras situadas más allá. Y para esto era necesario conquistar primeramente Troya, o Sigeo.”

GuerraConquistaInterésTroyaHomero
Book:Creation
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“Pasamos de los cálidos y bien regados campos de Babilonia, a través del desierto de la Mesopotamia, a las sierras boscosas de Frigia y Caria. Cada pocas millas el paisaje cambiaba. Y también las personas. La gente de las tierras bajas es pequeña, oscura e inteligente. Tienen grandes cabezas. En las montañas los hombres son altos, pálidos, de cabeza pequeña, y se mueven con lentitud. En las ciudades costeras griegas se ven curiosas mezclas raciales. Aunque predominan los jonios y los dorios, se han combinado con rubios tracios, oscuros fenicios, egipcios blancos como el papiro. La variedad fisica de los seres humanos es tan asombrosa como la igualdad de su carácter.”

Ser HumanoDiversidadCarácterVariedad
Book:Creation
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“Tan pronto como constaté cuán parecidos son todos los seres humanos, tuve que enfrentarme a la realidad de algunas grandes diferencias entre las razas. Los indios juegan. Los persa no. Los dioses védicos de la India son los demonios zo.roastrianos de Persia. ¿Por qué algunos hombres creen que el cosmos es una sola entidad, y otros que se divide en muchas entidades? ¿O que es muchas cosas dentro de una? ¿0 que no es ninguna? ¿Quién o qué ha creado el cosmos? ¿Existe o no? Existía yo antes de preguntar esto a Demócrito? ¿Existo ahora? ¿Existía de algún modo antes de nacer? Volveré a nacer como alguna otra cosa? Si en la tierra no hubiera gente que ve alargarse las sombras cuando cae el sol, ¿existiría el tiempo?”

TiempoCienciaFilosofiaSer HumanoCosmologíaIndiosPersas
Book:Creation
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“The failure of Hellenism has been, largely, a matter of organization. Rome never tried to impose any sort of worship upon the countries it conquered and civilized; in fact, quite the contrary, Rome was eclectic. All religions were given an equal opportunity and even Isis—after some resistance—was worshipped at Rome. As a result we have a hundred important gods and a dozen mysteries. Certain rites are—or were—supported by the state because they involved the genius of Rome. But no attempt was ever made to coordinate the worship of Zeus on the Capitol with, let us say, the Vestals who kept the sacred fire in the old forum. As time passed our rites became, and one must admit it bluntly, merely form, a reassuring reminder of the great age of the city, a token gesture to the old gods who were thought to have founded and guided Rome from a village by the Tiber to world empire. Yet from the beginning, there were always those who mocked. A senator of the old Republic once asked an auger how he was able to get through a ceremony of divination without laughing. I am not so light-minded, though I concede that many of our rites have lost their meaning over the centuries; witness those temples at Rome where certain verses learned by rote are chanted year in and year out, yet no one, including the priests, knows what they mean, for they are in the early language of the Etruscans, long since forgotten. As the religious forms of the state became more and more rigid and perfunctory, the people were drawn to the mystery cults, many of them Asiatic in origin. At Eleusis or in the various caves of Mithras, they were able to get a vision of what this life can be, as well as a foretaste of the one that follows. There are, then, three sorts of religious experiences. The ancient rites, which are essentially propitiatory. The mysteries, which purge the soul and allow us to glimpse eternity. And philosophy, which attempts to define not only the material world but to suggest practical ways to the good life, as well as attempting to synthesize (as Iamblichos does so beautifully) all true religion in a single comprehensive system.”

PhilosophyReligionPaganismJulianEcumenism1962HellenismFormalismEclecticismMystery Religions362
Book:JULIAN
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“A nation not of men but of laws, intoned John Adams as he, among other lawyers, launched what has easily become the most demented society ever consciously devised by intelligent men. We are now enslaves by laws. We are governed by lawyers. We create little but litigate much. Our monuments are the ever-expanding prisons, where millions languish for having committed victimless crimes or for simply not playing the game of plausible deniability (aka lying) with a sufficiently good legal team. What began as a sort of Restoration comedy, The Impeachment of a President, on a frivolous, irrelevant matter, is suddenly turning very black indeed, and all our political arrangements are at risk as superstitious Christian fundamentalists and their corporate manipulators seem intent on overthrowing two presidential elections in a Senate trial. This is no longer comedy. This is usurpation.”

Bill ClintonImpeachment Of Bill ClintonUsurpation Of The Constitution
Book:The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000
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“The malice of a true Christian attempting to destroy an opponent is something unique in the world. No other religion ever considered it necessary to destroy others because they did not share the same beliefs. At worst, another man's belief might inspire amusement or contempt—the Egyptians and their animal gods, for instance. Yet those who worshipped the Bull did not try to murder those who worshipped the Snake, or to convert them by force from Snake to Bull. No evil ever entered the world quite so vividly or on such a vast scale as Christianity did.”

ChristianityWorshipHypocrisyHeresyHoly War1962Evils Of HatredPriscus
Book:JULIAN
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“Tan pronto como constaté cuán parecidos son todos los seres humanos, tuve que enfrentarme a la realidad de algunas grandes diferencias entre las razas. Los indios juegan. Los persas no. Los dioses védicos de la India son los demonios zoroastrianos de Persia. ¿Por qué algunos hombres creen que el cosmos es una sola entidad, y otros que se divide en muchas entidades? ¿O que es muchas cosas dentro de una? ¿0 que no es ninguna? ¿Quién o qué ha creado el cosmos? ¿Existe o no? Existía yo antes de preguntar esto a Demócrito? ¿Existo ahora? ¿Existía de algún modo antes de nacer? Volveré a nacer como alguna otra cosa? Si en la tierra no hubiera gente que ve alargarse las sombras cuando cae el sol, ¿existiría el tiempo?”

TiempoCienciaCosmologiaFilososfiaSerhumano
Book:Creation
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“Contrary to vulgar legend the lives of great ballerinas are not entirely given up to a few minutes of graceful movement every night followed by champagne drunk out of their toeshoes till dawn, in the company of financiers ... no, most of their time is spent in filthy rehearsal halls, inhaling dust, or else in class, daily, year in year out, practicing, practicing even after they are already prima ballerinas.”

YearsNightGivenCompanyClassMinutesMovementContraryDrunkDustDawnHallsLegendsBalletEvery NightVulgarRehearsalGiven UpChampagneFilthyBallerinaFinanciers
Book:Death in the Fifth Position
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“The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal -- God is the Omnipotent Father -- hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.”

YearsHumansCountryGodAgeReligionCultureThreeEvilFatherKnownChristianitySkyAtheismIslamMalesTestamentJudaismOld TestamentLoathingOmnipotentDelegatesBronzeBarbaricMonotheismChristianity And IslamGod Delusion
Book:The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
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“At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our sky-godders, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that looney text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area.”

IfsMenWellsStillsReasonHateCausesKnownSkyEatingAreasDecidedCome UpPracticalsPrincipalWell KnownEmperorEarthquakesJerusalemOutlawMonotheismLeviticusShellfishJustinian
Author:Gore Vidal
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