As societies grow decadent, ...

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.
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

Quotes from the same author

As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
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 Gore Vidal
The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn't be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and did.
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 Gore Vidal
The only absolute attainment is absolute abandonment.
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 Gore Vidal
Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild.
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 Gore Vidal
Writing of history is our only heuristic principle. The Germans have a word for it, einfühlen. It is the ability to experience the past in the present and to recreate it. In my books, I have tried to recreate it in the most natural way possible: History must be integrated into the story without the weight of premonition.
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 Gore Vidal