Gore Vidal

Constantinople has no past; only a noisy present and a splendid future, if the auguries are to be believed.

...for ferocity there is nothing on Earth equal a Christian bishop hunting "heresy", as they call any opinion contrary to their own.

Modern Christianity is a encyclopedia of traditional superstition.

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.

Constantine was never a true Galilean; he merely used Christianity to extend his dominion over the world. He was a shrewd professional soldier, badly educated and not in the least interested in philosophy, though some perverse taste in him was hugely satisfied by doctrinal disputes; the mad haggling of bishops fascinated him.

On the throne of the world, any delusion becomes fact.

Are we a dream in the mind of a deity, or is each of us a separate dreamer, evoking his own reality?

We are all in the habit of censuring the great, as if we were popular playwrights, when in fact ordinary folk are quite as devious and as willful and as desperate to survive (if not prevail) as are thee great; particularly philosophers.

Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors.

The more money an American accumulates the less interesting he himself becomes.

The malice of a true Christian attempting to destroy an opponent is something unique in the world. No other religion ever considered it necessary to destroy others because they did not share the same beliefs. At worst, another man's belief might inspire amusement or contempt—the Egyptians and their animal gods, for instance. Yet those who worshipped the Bull did not try to murder those who worshipped the Snake, or to convert them by force from Snake to Bull. No evil ever entered the world quite so vividly or on such a vast scale as Christianity did.

There is no terror equal that of the ignorant in a strange place.