Quote

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth.

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.
Going
Soldier
Much
Army
Really
Usually
Life
Example
Beethoven
Wasn
Compose
Feeling
Navy
Feelings
Fifth
Done
Anyway

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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Sometimes I wonder if he wasn't born dead. I never met a man who was less interested in the living. Sometimes I think that's the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.
Kurt Vonnegut
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We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten.... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There is a strong feeling in the Middle West that the artist is not pulling his own weight no matter how hard he may work, that the other people are doing the real stuff.
Kurt Vonnegut
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They like life alright, but that they would like it even better if they could know that it was going to end sometime.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I just don't think people get off on language anymore. Language used to be an elevated art. It used to be for people what music can be. But people don't learn to do that anymore, so eloquence is merely a matter of waste. Who needs a good vocabulary and proper English? Eloquence - it's dead and who needs it?
Kurt Vonnegut
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I'm eighty-three and I've been smoking since I was eleven. I'm suing the cigarette company because it promised to kill me and it hasn't.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.
Kurt Vonnegut
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She believed, and was entitled to believe, I must say, that all human beings were evil by nature, whether tormentors or victims, or idle standers-by. They could only create meaningless tragedies, she said, since they weren't nearly intelligent enough to accomplish all the good they were meant to do.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.
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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The nicest veterans in Schenectady, I thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought.
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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So many people think that practicing an art is a good way to make a living. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. I'm talking about singing in the shower, I'm talking about dancing to the radio, I'm talking about writing a poem to a friend.
Kurt Vonnegut
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That is the first thing I know for sure: (1.) If the questions don't make sense, neither will the answers.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Here is the solution to the American drug problem suggested a couple years back by the wife of our President: Just say no.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The highest possible form of treason is to say that Americans aren’t loved wherever they go, whatever they do.
Kurt Vonnegut