Gore vidal why we fight quotes

Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing 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.

Nouns Quotes "Terrorism" is a metaphor, it's an abstract noun. It's like having a war on dandruff. It's something from advertising, it's meaningless. Country Quotes Eisenhower managed to begin the Vietnam war by not following his normal instinct of staying out of mischief. In his memoirs, he tells us why we didn't honor the Geneva accords and hold elections in Vietnam: because some 80 percent of the country would have voted for Ho Chi Minh.

This is very candid. The sort of thing one might have found in Stalin'smemoirs, had he not made ghosts even of ghosts. Enemy Quotes I don't see us winning the war. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims. Machines Quotes Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine. Country Quotes Since there is no system of public education, the great majority of my fellow citizens is frighteningly ignorant.

They have no idea where Iraq is. They accept as the gospel whatever the government tells them. Good grief, any other normal country would have been against the Iraq war! America at Last? Lowell Lecture, Harvard University, April 20, War , Metaphor , Terror. Now we have alienated almost the entire earth Gore Vidal.

War , Order , President. War , Army , Practice. Interview with Lila Azam Zanganeh, www. August 15, Country , War , Honor.

Art , Lying , War. Interview with David Barsamian, www. August 1, War , Thinking , Chinese. War , Nouns , Advertising. War , Years , Harry Truman. August 2, Stars , War , Long. Wall , War , Rights. War , Rights , Government. New York , War , Lying.

War , Mean , Doubt. War , Winning , Enemy. War , Stupid , Fighting. Source: www. Country , War , Temper. Country , War , Grief. War , Commitment , Rights.

Country , Clever , Real. Send Report. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word "democracy. Father Two America. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets?

On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, neither losing more than a particle to the other, in passing. Stars Two Orbit. Amelia Earhart Aviator. Amy Goodman Journalist. Anais Nin Author. Charlton Heston Actor. Christopher Hitchens Author. Christopher Isherwood Novelist. Dick Cavett Host.

Jack Kerouac Novelist. Joanne Woodward Actress. John Updike Novelist. Michael Mewshaw Author. Noam Chomsky Linguist. Norman Mailer Novelist. Saul Bellow Writer. Tennessee Williams Playwright. Tom Wolfe Author. A good deed never goes unpunished. Write something, even if it's just a suicide note. In any case, write what you know will always be excellent advice to those who ought not to write at all.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little. At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice. The theatre needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all. I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself. Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either. Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.

Television is a great leveller. You always end up sounding like the people who ask the questions. A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. We must always remember that the police are recruited from the criminal classes.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes. Half the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for President — the same half? The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since.

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 militarised republic.