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I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did.

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.
Make
Speech
Speeches
People
Asked
Reply
Bits
Beatles
Least
Pulled
Alive
Mission
Artist
Missions
Littles
Artists
Little
Appreciate
Plausible

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George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography.
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We were all gun nuts and they were called varmints, crows were, because they ate grain and so did we.
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It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems ... This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry-or laugh.
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... life, by definition, is never still.
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Incidentally, I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the great science fiction writer and biochemist Dr. Isaac Asimov. John Updike, who is religious, says I talk more about God than any seminarian. Socialism is, in fact, a form of Christianity, people wishing to imitate Christ.
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We're a terribly lonesome society. For all I know, all societies are. You can make a few new friends, that's all. You can't change history. History is happening to us now.
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The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people can't.
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And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.
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You know what truth is? [...] It's some crazy thing my neighbor believes. If I want to make friends with him, I ask him what he believes. He tells me, and I say, Yeah, yeah - ain't it the truth?
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I love cell phones. I see people so happy and proud, walking around. Gesturing, you know. I'm like Karl Marx, I'm up for anything that makes people happy.
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It seems to me that the most universal revolutionary wish now or ever is a wish for heaven, a wish by a human being to be honored by angels for something other than beauty or usefulness.
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Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Or they'll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Children get smashed for hours on some strictly limited aspect of the Great Big Everything, the Universe, such as water or snow or mud or colors or rocks.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I am the victim of a fortunate series of accidents.
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.
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Hitler at the end thought that he himself was one more casualty in the war.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Make love when you can. It's good for you.
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What do my science fiction stories have in common with pornography? Fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world, I'm told.
Kurt Vonnegut