This might explain why Obama gave billions to Wall Street crooks, and dragged the Iraq and Afghan wars on and on._x000D_ _x000D_ Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing... We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns.
Interpretation
The quote critiques American society's forgetfulness and disregard for legal and moral principles.
Gore Vidal expresses a deep disillusionment with the American political landscape, suggesting that citizens are unable to learn from past mistakes due to their collective amnesia. He laments the erosion of the rule of law and the Bill of Rights, comparing the current state of the nation to a decayed structure that fails to uphold its values, reflecting a cynical view of governance and societal responsibility.
In practice
Use this quote in a lecture about the importance of historical awareness in civic duties.
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.
No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.
Pre-emptive war might fall within the framework of international law.
Why did one straw break the camel's back?_x000D_ _x000D_ Here's the secret:_x000D_ _x000D_ The million other straws underneath it.
Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?
When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for Him, but He made for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God.
The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly.
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