Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on.
Interpretation
The existence and prohibition of drugs serve to control and marginalize society.
Gore Vidal's quote suggests that the very prohibition of drugs is a deliberate mechanism used by those in power to enforce control over the population. He implies that if drugs did not exist, the authorities would have to create a similar construct in order to justify their powers of arrest and control, thus highlighting the relationship between governance, personal freedom, and societal vulnerabilities.
In practice
Using this quote at a conference about drug policy reforms.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions.
MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.
Strange - is it not? That of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too.
We Greeks believe that a man who takes no part in public affairs is not merely lazy, but good for nothing
The cruel ambush of 9/11 supposedly 'changed everything,' slapping us back to reality. Yet we are constantly shocked, shocked by the foreseeable.
Every kid has a bug period... I never grew out of mine.
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