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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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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.
Earth
Millions
Fourteenth
Book
Word
Entitled
Nothing
Read
Thoughtful
Take
Hope
Consists
Long
Experience
Period
Years
Given
Million
Men
Doesn
Periods
Past
Mankind

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For a Russian to be chivalrous with an American is a spiritual impossibility, a conradiction in terms.
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I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel better, even if it's unscientific. No scientist worthy of the name could say such a thing.
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Oh, a lion hunter in the jungle dark, And a sleeping drunkard up in central park, and a Chinese dentist and a British queen All fit together in the same machine. Nice, nice, such very different people in the same device!
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The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers.
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Our government's got a war on drugs. That's certainly better than no drugs at all.
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Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.
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How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
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Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the human situation is just too awful.
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We are what we pretend to be.
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You know, I think the main purpose of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps is to get poor Americans into clean, pressed, unpatched clothes, so rich Americans can stand to look at them.
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Poverty is a relatively mild disease for even a very flimsy American soul, but uselessness will kill strong and weak souls alike, and kill every time.
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I wasn't aware of Ku Klux Klan as I was aware of the widespread assumption that African-Americans were dumber than white people. I think my father believed that. I think everybody white did.
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Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
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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.
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Beer, of course, is actually a depressant, but poor people will never stop hoping otherwise.
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It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.
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Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - God damn it, you've got to be kind.
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For some people, getting pregnant is as easy as catching cold. And there certainly was an analogy there: Colds and babies were both caused by germs which loved nothing so much as a mucous membrane.
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The time would not pass. Somebody was playing with the clocks, and not only the electronic clocks but the wind-up kind too. The second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again. There was nothing I could do about it. As an Earthling I had to believe whatever clocks said -and calendars.
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I am better now. Word of honour: I am better now.
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