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.
And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prison as to innocent untroubled sleep.
My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel; I know not where I am nor what I do.
Deeper than our instinct to live is our longing to be alive.
Suffering is a byproduct of evolution by natural selection, an inevitable consequence that may worry us in our more sympathetic moments but cannot be expected to worry a tiger - even if a tiger can be said to worry about anything at all - and certainly cannot be expected to worry its genes.
I think, in many people's minds, the Confederate battle flag is not only a memorial to our ancestors, which is perfectly OK, but also a symbol of white superiority and an inclination for people to believe that even slavery would've been OK.
Insomnia is an all-night travel agency with posters advertising faraway places.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.