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
I used to be able to summon up scenes at will, but now aging memory is so busy weeding its own garden that, promiscuously, it pulls up roses as well as crabgrass.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Literature in the written sense represents the triumph of language over writing: the subversion of writing for purposes that have little or nothing to do with social and economic control.
Death | Equanimity | Eternal | Evil | Fear | Grace | Life | Life | Men | Reward | Will |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Since nothing is free, to each his price.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
For a writer, memory is everything. But then you have to test it; how good is it, really? Whether it's wrong or not, I'm beyond caring. It is what it is. As Norman Mailer would say, "It's existential." He went to his grave without knowing what that word meant.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
For myself, I want no advantage over my fellow man, and if he is weaker than I, all the more is it my duty to help him.
Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy
Now it is certain. There is no magic stone. No secret to be found. One must go with the mind's winnowed learning.
Man |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).
Darkness | Death | Defeat | Earth | Failure | Hope | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mystery | Nothing | Power | Reading | Sadness | Will | Failure |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.
Indispensable | Insanity | Man | System |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those “liberals” who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the highest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.