A Quote by Gore Vidal
Nothing that Shakespeare ever invented was to equal Lincoln's invention of himself and, in the process, us.
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Until the early 90s, when I was working on a project about the idea of free will in American philosophy. I knew that Lincoln had had something to say about "necessity" and "fatalism," and so I began writing him into the book. In fact, Lincoln took over. I wrote instead 'Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President,' in 1999, and I've splitting rails with Mr. Lincoln ever since. If there's a twelve-step process for this somewhere, I haven't found it yet.
I won't say he [Shakespeare] 'invented' us, because journalists perpetually misunderstand me on that. I'll put it more simply: he contains us. Our ways of thinking and feeling-about ourselves, those we love, those we hate, those we realize are hopelessly 'other' to us-are more shaped by Shakespeare than they are by the experience of our own lives.
The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight-of-hand that was ever invented.
People think that direct address was invented by Ferris Bueller, but in fact, it wasn't. It was invented by Shakespeare.
Abraham Lincoln once noted that 'the ballot is stronger than the bullet.' Foreign adversaries, who can't match the military, economic or diplomatic power of the U.S., understand Lincoln's wisdom. They seek to sow chaos and confusion in our electoral process to gain an advantage over us.
A lot of people think that all the things that could be invented have been invented. But we are just on the frontier of discovery and invention. It's a very exciting time.
I was in the hospital and I was paralyzed and I went through all of these things. I've had all of these crazy experiences and jobs in my life, but I never really write about them because I've already told them as stories to friends. For me, the process of writing is the process of invention. But the hospital story felt told already. There was nothing to discover in the telling of it. The discovery had to be in the form. It wasn't really the unfamiliarity of the form, it was more about a way incorporate invention and how to realize it imaginatively.
Abraham Lincoln because he was a man filled with great compassion who believed that all men are created free and equal, and was not afraid to stand on that platform. The way Lincoln lived his life has served me well in mine.
That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.
There is nothing more hostile to a city that a tyrant, under whom in the first and chiefest place, there are not laws in common, but one man, keeping the law himself to himself, has the sway, and this is no longer equal.
How can diverse Americans become "one people"? I believe that one path is for us to pursue the study of the past that includes all of us, making all of us feel connected to one another as "we the people," working and living in a nation, founded and "dedicated" (to use Lincoln's language) to the "proposition" that "all men are created equal."
I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent as Mr. Lincoln's. But I will do my very best to equal his brevity and his plain speaking.
Shakespeare was not a scholar in the sense we regard the term to-day, yet no man ever lived or probably ever will live that equalled or will equal him in the expression of thought. He simply read the book of nature and interpreted it from the standpoint of his own magnificent genius.
No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all.
Oh, that feels good! I don't know who invented ties and then insisted a man was only properly dressed when he wore one, but if I ever meet him, I'll strangle him with his own invention
When an Englishman has professed his belief in the supremacy of Shakespeare amongst all poets, he feels himself excused from the general study of literature. He also feels himself excused from the particular study of Shakespeare.
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