Quote

We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten.... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.

Kurt Vonnegut

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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.
Haven
Harvard
Pretty
Figured
Alive
Repeat
Kids
Doomed
Past
Repeats
Matter
Afford
Time
Ten
Misinformed
Havens
Dense

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

Image
When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
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.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
My father said, ‘When in doubt, castle.’
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Here is the solution to the American drug problem suggested a couple years back by the wife of our President: Just say no.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Or they'll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
My ancestors were all Freethinkers, formerly Catholics. It was science and Darwin, in particular, that made them decide, as educated people, which they were, that the priest, nice as he was, didn't know what he was talking about.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
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
Image
Nietzsche had a little one-liner on how to choose a wife. He said, ''Are you willing to have a conversation with this woman for the next forty years?'' That's how to pick a wife.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
. . . hummings and clickings could be heard-the sounds attendant to the flow of electrons, now augmenting one maze of electromagnetic crises to a condition that was translatable from electrical qualities and quantities to a high grade of truth.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Never take liquor into the bedroom. Don't stick anything in your ears. Be anything but an architect. Live in a nice country rather than a powerful one. Power makes everybody crazy. Get somebody to teach you to play a musical instrument.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
egregious. most people think that word means terrible or unheard of or unforgivable. it has a much more interesting story than that to tell. it means outside the herd. imagine that - thousands of people, outside the herd.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Farewell, hello, farewell, hello.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
I don't know what anybody else in the world would want to thank America for, but man, it [jazz] works. What I like about it - and what public health people ought to like about it - it's safe sex.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Is there nothing I have done which will outlive me, other than the opprobrium of my first wife and sons and grandchildren? Do I care? Doesn't everybody? Poor me. Poor practically everybody, with so little durable good to leave behind!
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
The Bible may be the Greatest Story Ever Told, but the most popular story you can ever tell is about a good-looking couple having a really swell time copulating outside wedlock, and having to quit for one reason or another while doing it is still a novelty.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
Kurt Vonnegut