I do not admire 'the people,' as such. No one really does. Their folk wisdom is usually false, their instincts predatory. Even their sense of survival - so highly developed in the individual - goes berserk in the mass. A crowd is a fool.
Gore VidalIf the splitter of hairs has a sharp enough knife, the fact of life itself can be chopped into nothing.
Gore VidalOur rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own.
Gore VidalThe 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.
Gore VidalThe ideal to which John Adams subscribed-that we would be a nation of laws, not of men-was quickly subverted when the churches forced upon everyone, through supposedly neutral and just laws, their innumerable taboos on sex, alcohol, gambling. We are now indeed a nation of laws, mostly bad and certainly antihuman.
Gore Vidal