A Quote by Gore Vidal

World events are the work of individuals whose motives are often frivolous, even casual.

Gore Vidal

Quote Topics

Casual Even Events Frivolous Individuals Motives Often Whose Work World World Events

Quote Author

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

Because books are written by individuals, it has often made knowledge seem like the product of individuals, even though everybody has always understood that individuals are working within the social network.

David Weinberger

Even the most casual events are connected to God's purpose for His people from all eternity.

Alistair Begg

A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.

David Frum

A boardroom is a collection of individuals, and individuals have varying motives, egos, agendas and qualifications. Sometimes the dynamics can go off track.

Carly Fiorina

Shall I tell you what supported me through all those years of exile among a people whose language I could not understand and whose attitude towards me we always uncertain and often hostile? It was this: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world".

David Livingstone

All the politics in the world are nothing else but a kind of analysis of the quantity of probability in casual events, and a good politician signifies no more but one who is dexterous at such calculations.

John Arbuthnot

The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence. But even less significant events have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril, and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet, and Contra-flow.

Terry Pratchett

In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail.

William Ellery Channing

No love is entirely without worth, even when the frivolous calls to the frivolous and the base to the base.

Iris Murdoch

When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order (unlike the world of events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder).

Aaron Siskind

The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate.

H. L. Mencken

Humans are very seldom either totally sincere or totally hypocritical. Their moods change, their motives are mixed, and they are often quite mistaken as to what their motives are.

C. S. Lewis

Global security can be formed or threatened by heads of state whose wisdom, folly and obsessions shape global events. But often it is the security practitioners, those rarely in the headlines but whose craft and energy quietly break new ground, who keep us safe or put us in peril.

Michael Hayden

I have always been very proud of my Jewish heritage, which has greatly influenced my music, my world view, and my work as an advocate for individuals whom society often leaves behind.

Itzhak Perlman

Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.