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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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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.
Thinking
Americans
Unjust
Read
Unfortunately
War
Wars
Stills
Extremely
Still
Useful
Best
Leaves
Much
Plenty
Think
Sick

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.
Kurt Vonnegut
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So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People would be surprised if they knew how much in this world was due to prayers.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There was a still life on Billy's bedside table-two pills, an ashtray with three lipstick-stained cigarettes in it, one cigarette still burning, and a glass of water. The water was dead. So it goes. Air was trying to get out of the dead water. Bubbles were clinging to the walls of the glass, too weak to climb out.
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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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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People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings. so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead.
Kurt Vonnegut
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On the day they dropped the bomb Frank had a tablespoon and a Mason jar. What he was doing was spooning different kinds of bugs into the jar and making them fight....I can remember other bug fights we staged later on...They won't fight unless you keep shaking the jar.
Kurt Vonnegut
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And what is literature, Rabo, he said, but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the universe but a few molecules who have the disease called 'thought'.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The Summer had died peacefully in its sleep, and Autumn, as soft-spoken executrix, was locking life up safely until Spring came to claim it.
Kurt Vonnegut
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About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which mean, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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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I'm wild again, beguiled again, a whimpering, simpering child again. Bewitched, bothered, bewildered am I.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The paintings by dead men who were poor most of their lives are the most valuable pieces in my collection. And if an artist wants to really jack up the prices of his creations, may I suggest this: suicide.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I am of course a skeptic about the divinity of Christ and a scorner of the notion that there is a God who cares how we are or what we do.
Kurt Vonnegut
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We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Farewell, hello, farewell, hello.
Kurt Vonnegut