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Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

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.
Well
Unexamined
Life
Examined
Plato
Worth
Says
Turns
Living
Wells

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His response was to fight it with the only weapons at hand—passive resistance and open displays of contempt.
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I taught writing for a while and whenever somebody would tell me they were going to write about their dad, I would tell them they might as well go write about killing puppies because neither story was going to work. It just doesn't work.
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Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.
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The death of a library, any library, suggests that the community has lost its soul.
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What the Gospels actually said was: don't kill anyone until you are absolutely sure they aren't well connected.
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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.
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Evolution is a mistake. Humans are a mistake. We've destroyed our planet.
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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.
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You know, the Emancipation Proclamation was like giving freedom to domestic animals.
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I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.
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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.
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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.
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I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's why I wrote books.
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What's the point of being alive, she said, if you're not going to communicate?
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They tell him that there is no why, since the moment simply is and since all of them are trapped in the moment, like bugs in amber.
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My own feeling is that if adultery is wickedness then so is food. Both make me feel so much better afterward.
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No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.
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Anyway -- because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next -- and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis -- at any time of night or day.
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Each one of us has to be what he or she is.
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