Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.
Gore VidalTrue wisdom is to know the extent of what you don't know quite as well as you know what you do know.
Gore VidalPeople are worse educated than they used to be. Certainly they are not very interested in reading books, as opposed to watching television, movies. They are used to getting things through the eye and the ear. In a small way, literature goes on being written, but few people like it. Once it's bureaucratized by the schoolteachers, the game's up.
Gore VidalIt never occurred to any Enlightenment figure in the eighteenth century that law was not preferable to man.
Gore Vidal