The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.
Interpretation
Misrepresentation of one's words can cause strong emotional responses.
Gore Vidal emphasizes the importance of accurately representing someone's thoughts and words. Misquotation can lead to misunderstandings and distortions of one's beliefs and intentions, provoking an intense reaction from the individual whose words have been misrepresented.
In practice
During a speech against misinformation, one might reference Vidal's quote to highlight the significance of truthfulness.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
Thinking consists in envisaging, realizing structural features and structural requirements; proceeding in accordance with, and determined by, these requirements; thereby changing the situation in the direction of structural improvements.
The wise stand out because they see themselves as part of the Whole. They shine because they don't want to impress. They achieve great things because they don't look for recognition. Their wisdom is contained in what they are, not their opinions. They refuse to argue, so no-one argues with them.
The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace unique; the everyday eternal.
But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done.
We listen to those whom we know to be of the same opinion as ourselves, and we call them wise for being of it; but we avoid such as differ from us.
No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.