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But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.

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.
Mind
Weight
Grandchildren
Token
Would
Books
Accident
Calculation
Eyes
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Resistance
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Spiritual
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Texture
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Involve
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Sorry
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Book
Minds
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Sweetly

More quotes by 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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Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
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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I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable.
Kurt Vonnegut
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One thing I hate about school committees today is that they cut arts programs out of the curriculum because they say the arts aren't a way to make a living.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward - and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Nowadays, of course, just about our only solvent industry is the merchandising of death, bankrolled by our grandchildren.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Anybody with any sense knows the whole solar system will go up like a celluloid collar by-and-by.
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 think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that's not saying much.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The world is full of people who are very clever at seeming much smarter than they really are.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There was no immunity to cuckoo ideas on Earth.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It is always pitiful when any human being falls into a condition hardly more respectable than that of an animal. How much more pitiful it is when the person who falls has had all the advantages!
Kurt Vonnegut
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Words may deeply wound us, but we must run that risk to be free.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The crowd, having been promised nothing, felt cheated, having received nothing.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Pretend to be good always and even God will be fooled.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The slaves were simply turned loose without any property. They were easily recognizable. They were black. They were suddenly free to go exploring.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The name of the new religion, said Rumfoord, is The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. . . The two chief teachings of this religion are these: Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.
Kurt Vonnegut