Policemen are seldom tried for their crimes, or indeed, held responsible for what they do, which disturbs the peace and causes distress among the orderly.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the lack of accountability for law enforcement actions, highlighting a societal issue.
Gore Vidal's quote reflects on the troubling reality that police officers often escape scrutiny for their actions, even when those actions disrupt societal harmony and cause suffering. It raises important questions about justice, accountability, and the social contract, suggesting a disconnect between law enforcement and the principles they are meant to uphold.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about police reform.
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.
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A man who gives himself to be a possession of aliens leads a Yahoo life, having bartered his soul to a brute-master. He is not of them. He may stand against them, persuade himself of a mission, batter and twist them into something which they, of their own accord, would not have been.
New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
We owe much to the fruitful meditation of our sages, but a sane view of life is, after all, elaborated mainly in the kitchen.
The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.
The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.
When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it.
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