# Quote — Gore Vidal, At Home

> The average "educated" American has been made to believe that, somehow, the United States must lead the world even though hardly anyone has any information at all about those countries we are meant to lead. Worse, we have very little information about our own country and its past. That is why it is not really possible to compare a writer like Howells with any living American writer because Howells thought that it was a good thing to know as much as possible about his own country as well as other countries while our writers today, in common with the presidents and paint manufacturers, live in a present without past among signs whose meanings are uninterpretable.

- Author: [Gore Vidal](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal.md)
- Book: [At Home](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal/at-home.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gore_Vidal#At_Home_(1988)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal/at-home/the-average-educated

## More from this book

> In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal/at-home/in-a-nation.md)

> I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal/at-home/i-suspect-that.md)

> Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gore-vidal/at-home/class-is-the.md)