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
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.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Well, it's been the monopolizing of great wealth, which tends to happen in basically unjust societies and undemocratic societies. We have plenty of would-be democrats, would-be liberals, and would-be progressives. But how do you organize? The Democratic Party is a machine to get votes for its people, none of who should probably be elected to the high offices of state. That's all. The Republican Party is fundamentally crooked and might well be outlawed one of these days. Le Pen, you know, in France, who is an out-and-out fascist, the French have managed in some clever way to contain him. I mean, he's always running for president; his votes never seem to show up. I don't know how they do it, but we've got to do that with the Republican base, the religious right. We don't want them running the country. Nobody does. Certainly not the founding fathers. And I think we have to ride herd on them and make sure they do not seize the state.
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 |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Well, you have to work out what it is. They are a little splinter. They can't summon many voters at any given time. They are a minority of a minority of a minority. They have everybody buffaloed because the great corporations like them and pay money to their candidates for sheriff and senator. And they're playing big-time politics. Yes, indeed. But the average person doesn't like them. You know, any time I want to get applause — and I lecture across America in state after state after state — when I fear things are getting a little low, I always say, “And another thing: Let us tax all the religions,” I bring down the goddamn house with that. And any politician would if he had sense enough to do it. The people don't like their tax exemption.
Family | Integration | Shame | Thought | Thought |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
The elimination of rent, interest, profit and the production of wealth to satisfy the wants of all the people. That is the demand.
Equality | Philosophy | Principles | Race |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
There is no such thing as a true account of anything.
People |
Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm; great good fortune comes to failure in the end. All is change; all yields its place and goes; to persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man. The coward despairs.
It is a good thing to be rich, it is a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be beloved of many friends.
Avoid disputes as much as possible. In order to appear easy and well-bred in conversation, you may assure yourself that it requires more wit, as well as more good humour, to improve than to contradict the notions of another: but if you are at any time obliged to enter on an argument, give your reasons with the utmost coolness and modesty, two things which scarce ever fail of making an impression on the hearers. Besides, if you are neither dogmatical, nor show either by your actions or words that you are full of yourself, all will the more heartily rejoice at your victory. Nay, should you be pinched in your argument, you may make your retreat with a very good grace. You were never positive, and are now glad to be better informed. This has made some approve the Socratic way of reasoning, where, while you scarce affirm anything, you can hardly be caught in an absurdity; and though possibly you are endeavouring to bring over another to your opinion, which is firmly fixed, you seem only to desire information from him.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.