Gore Vidal Quotes

The modern mind tends to be more and more critical and analytical in spirit, hence it must devise for itself an engine of expression which is logically defensible at every point and which tends to correspond to the rigorous spirit of modern science.

To me, every interview, even if you love the artist, needs to be somewhat adversarial. Which doesn't mean you need to attack the person, but you do need to look at it like you're trying to get information that has not been written about before.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

I wish there was a news channel that really told you what was going on in the world, not just sensationalized news.

I don't read reviews. I find them very distracting, whether they're good or bad.

Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.

I tell my students, even if you are an opinion journalist, your opinion should be based on facts.

We'll have to avoid the perils of false equivelance, quoting a person on each side as if there was a genuine debate when we knoow that there isn't.

Being beyond politics, I am able to examine the role of the media without worrying about the indignant harrumphing that emanates from many journalists and commentators when you do so.

Clearly, you can't believe everything you read in the press.

More and more, journalism seems to have hopped out of Truth's pocket and crept into another.

To assume that someone's views are invariably influenced or shaped by his or her partner is lazy. It is an intellectual crutch we grope for when we do not have an effective counter to someone's argument.

I want the Times to give tough reviews. That's partially why I read the Times.

If you are a journalist, check and double-check your sources. Don't just swallow what politicians tell you.

There's no credibility in anonymous sources.

I guess you'd have to say that sometimes the audience is smarter than the critics.

Media bias in editorials and columns is one thing. Media fraud in reporting 'facts' in news stories is something else. ...The issue is not what various journalists or news organizations' editorial views are. The issue is the transformation of news reporting into ideological spin, along with self-serving taboos and outright fraud.

Literary criticism has about it neither rigour nor proof. Where it is honest, it is passionate, private experience seeking to persuade.

To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism.

Your job description as a journalist is to question and scrutinize critically-neve r to repeat claims uncritically, no matter how highly placed the sources in the bureaucracy. Don't ever forget that. You're a damn good writer, but that talent is completely worthless if you forget your job description.

Be brutal with the past, especially your own, and have no respect for the philosophies that are foisted on you from outside.

If you don't question the officials' role then you've got to ask what they are doing

You can be a giant among artists without ever attaining any great skill. Facility is a dangerous thing. When there is too much technical ease the brain stops criticizing. Don't let the hand fall into a smart way of putting the mind to sleep.

The philosophy of science is inherent in the process. This is to say, you think critically, you draw a conclusion based on evidence, but we all pursue discovery based on our observations. That's where science starts.

As an educator, I try to get people to be fundamentally curious and to question ideas that they might have or that are shared by others. In that state of mind, they have earned a kind of inoculation against the fuzzy thinking of these weird ideas floating around out there. So rather than correct the weird ideas, I would rather them to know how to think in the first place. Then they can correct the weird idea themselves.