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Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

Kurt Vonnegut

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Kurt Vonnegut
Age: 84 †
Born: 1922
Born: November 11
Died: 2007
Died: April 14
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Indianapolis
Indiana
Kurt Vonnegut
Jr.
Literature
Call
Jonah
Cradle
Nearly
John
Parents
Parent
Called

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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The crowd, having been promised nothing, felt cheated, having received nothing.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The Fourteenth Book is entitled, What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years? It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: Nothing.
Kurt Vonnegut
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You are being suffocated by tradition... Why don't you say, 'I am going to build a life for myself, for my time, and make it a work of art'? Your life isn't a work of art ---it's a thirdhand Victorian whatnot shelf, complete with someone else's collection of seashells and hand-carved elephants.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for--to find out how much a man could take without breaking.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It's incumbent on the President to entertain. Clinton did a better job of it - and was forgiven for the scandals, incidentally. Bush is entertaining us with what I call the Republican Super Bowl, which is played by the lower classes using live ammunition.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Don't be reckless with other peoples hearts. And don't put up with people that are reckless with yours.
Kurt Vonnegut
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there i was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic tv, with virtually no health services for the poor. where to go? what to do?
Kurt Vonnegut
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It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Take it from somebody who has been around for a million years: When you get right down to it, food is practically the whole story every time.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Trust a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The most racist, nastiest act by America, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki. Not of Hiroshima, which might have had some military significance. But Nagasaki was purely blowing away yellow men, women, and children. I'm glad I'm not a scientist because I'd feel so guilty now.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.
Kurt Vonnegut
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This is what i find most encouraging about the writing trades: they allow mediocre people who are patient and industrious to revise their stupidity, to edit themselves into something like intelligence. They also allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
Kurt Vonnegut
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My God, the religious right will not acknowledge what a merciful person Jesus was.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Anyone unable to understand how useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Any scientist who can't explain to an eight-year-old what he is doing is a charlatan.
Kurt Vonnegut