A Quote by Gore Vidal

"Terrorism" is a metaphor, it's an abstract noun. It's like having a war on dandruff. It's something from advertising, it's meaningless.

Gore Vidal

Quote Topics

Abstract Advertising Having Like Meaningless Metaphor Noun Something Terrorism War

Quote Author

Gore Vidal
American - Writer
October 3, 1925 - July 31, 2012

What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender.

Terry Jones

Little Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to be at war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror, but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means. It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless.

Gore Vidal

Ludicrous concepts…like the whole idea of a 'war on terrorism'. You can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but you can't wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?

Terry Jones

The war against terror is like a war against dandruff. It's a metaphor. It's not about anything.

Gore Vidal

I think that the idea of a war on an abstract noun is unacceptable.

Hamza Yusuf

You cannot win a War on Terrorism. It's like having a war on jealousy.

David Cross

People think of security as a noun, something you go buy. In reality, it's an abstract concept like happiness. Openness is unbelievably helpful to security.

James Gosling

Americans don't need a metaphor for war. We have war. If anything, we use war as a metaphor for sports.

John Hodgman

There's no such thing as a war against terrorism. It's idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.

Gore Vidal

Mr. Speaker, I agree with those who say that the Global War on Terrorism is actually a Global War of Ideas and that terrorism is one of the tactics used in that War.

Mac Thornberry

The catch-all phrase "the war on terrorism", in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against "criminal gangsterism". Terrorism is a tactic. You can't have a war against a tactic. It's deliberately vague and non-definable in order to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere and under any circumstance.

Ron Paul

Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory.

Howard Zinn

A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism.

John Mortimer

If I've made something really serene... well, if everything is like that, it's like having too much icing on your cake. You need something else under it, some kind of grounding. It's like if you're making a film, you can't have only happy moments, or else they become meaningless.

Jon Hopkins

Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a 'war on terrorism' is a contradiction in terms.

Howard Zinn

War is a lie. War is a racket. War is hell. War is waste. War is a crime. War is terrorism. War is not the answer.