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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.

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.
Purpose
Main
Look
Army
Clean
Looks
Americans
Think
Clothes
Corps
Thinking
Stand
Pressed
Rich
Marine
Poor
Navy

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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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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What good is a planet called Earth, after all, if you own no land?
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Well here you are, there it is, THIS is what it's all about.
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I've been living alone for so long, everything about me’s private. I’m surprised anyone’s able to understand a word I say.
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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.
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A nice thing about war-not that anything about war is nice, I guess-is that while it's going on and you're in it, you never worry about doing the right thing.
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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.
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What I would really like to have been, given a perfect world, is a jazz pianist. I mean jazz. I don't mean rock and roll. I mean the never-the-same-twice music the American black people gave the world.
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The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't let her. Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on? she asked me. The big show is inside my head, I said.
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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?
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It's the writer's job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all.
Kurt Vonnegut
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This is a nation tragedy, of course - that we've changed from a society to an audience.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don't read much or think much -- who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could.
Kurt Vonnegut
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My ancestors were Freethinkers - and that's what I am, except we're called secular humanists now.
Kurt Vonnegut
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if there is a god, he sure hates people
Kurt Vonnegut
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So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.
Kurt Vonnegut