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
History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives would be not only meager but in a youth-worshiping country like America, painfully brief.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
If the splitter of hairs has a sharp enough knife, the fact of life itself can be chopped into nothing.
Men | Model | Time | Wonder | Understand |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The planet Venus, a circle of silver in a green sky, pierced the edge of the evening while the wintry woods darkened about me and in the stillness the regular sound of my footsteps striking the pavement was like a the rhythmic beating of a giant stone heart.
Experiment | Freedom | Law | Lesson | Order | Will | Work | Think |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on Earth.
Cunning | Destroy | Enough | Labor | Slavery | Struggle | Will | Understand |
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
The strike is the weapon of the oppressed, of men capable of appreciating justice and having the courage to resist wrong and contend for principle. The nation had for its cornerstone a strike, and while arrogant injustice throws down the gauntlet and challenges the right to conflict, strikes will come, come by virtue of irrevocable laws, destined to have a wider sweep and greater power as men advance in intelligence and independence
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place
Labor |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.
Giving | Government | Religion | Government |
Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy
One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.
Magic |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
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.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
Nothing |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The first TV babies are now writing with a TV mind that has no attention span at all.
Objectivity | Opinion | 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.