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I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

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.
Remember
Matter
Repeat
Doomed
Repeats
News
Alive
Past

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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If I wrote something that hadn't really happened, and I tried to sell it, I could go to jail. That's fraud!
Kurt Vonnegut
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The highest treason in the USA is to say Americans are not loved, no matter where they are, no matter what they are doing there.
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It's a terrible waste to be happy and not notice it.
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And we all vied, in saving face, to be the greatest student of human nature, the person with the quickest sense of humor.
Kurt Vonnegut
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In real life as in grand opera, arias only make hopeless situations worse.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.
Kurt Vonnegut
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After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin?
Kurt Vonnegut
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You can't fight progress. The best you can do is ignore it, until it finally takes your livelihood and self-respect away.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It's perfectly ordinary to be a socialist. It's perfectly normal to be in favor of fire departments.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I'm so sorry - we had this cottage up in Lake Maxinkuckee, in Culver. I've thought so often of the poor Pottawattomies we took this land away from. They must have loved it so.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The city was blacked out because bombers might come, so Billy didn't get to see Dresden do one of the most cheerful things a city can do when the sun goes down, which is to wink its lights on one by one.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Belief is nearly the whole of the universe whether based on truth or not.
Kurt Vonnegut
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A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
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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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.
Kurt Vonnegut