This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
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
I do not oppose the insane asylum — but I abhor and condemn the cutthroat system that robs man of his reason, drives him to insanity and makes the lunatic asylum an indispensable adjunct to every civilized community.
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.
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
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
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 |
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
Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
If we succeed in cleaning up the environment, we donÂ’t have enough money for war. But Americans are basically pro-war. WeÂ’re a violent people and we like it.
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 |