Gore Vidal Quotes

I'm a victim of my own insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything. It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned to make that feeling work for me.

I am never more myself than in my self-betrayals.

Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.

The man I am will always raise a protest against the man I wanted to be and the two will live together to the end, but the man I wanted to be will be the one on whom judgement will be passed.

I am a spy in the house of me. I report back from the front lines of the battle that is me. I am somewhat nonplused by the event that is my life.

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.

I've had times in my life when I really haven't been able to figure myself out.

We're all different; we all have our ways of understanding ourselves and the way we live our lives and struggle with our humanity.

Every fight is personal, but with myself.

The true cure for self-righteousness is self-knowledge.

Self knowledge begins with the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that goes from the mirror to the matter.

If thou has not seen the devil, look at thine own self.

I don't pretend for a second that I'm that great of a person on a day-to-day basis. I'm a deeply flawed human.

I found from working on the film that I am a bigot, at times. And that I am also a coward, at times.

I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose.

There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

Can't get away from your own self.

I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.

If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.

The disease we all have and that we have to fight against all our lives is ... the disease of self.

Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge.

There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.

The ordinary man puts up a struggle against all that is not himself, whereas it is against himself, in a limited but all-essential field, that the artist has to battle.

The bigger confrontation is the one an individual has with itself.

I feel like we're attracted to paths in life that force us to look at our weaknesses or deficiencies as human beings. Not to get all deep on you, but that's how I feel.