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Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

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.
Jazz
Opinion
Future
Littles
Little
Clowning
Congratulate
Historians
Historian

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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You are better than you think.
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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The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I am beguiled by your physical beauty, and I am moved by how head-over-heels in love with books you are. And nowhere else have I found such thoughtful and literate reportage on the state of the American soul, as that soul makes itself known in the books we write.
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
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I just know that there are plenty of people who are in terrible trouble and can't get out. And so I'm impatient with those who think that it's easy for people to get out of trouble.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The highest treason in the USA is to say Americans are not loved, no matter where they are, no matter what they are doing there.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard to be misinformed.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.
Kurt Vonnegut
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What the Gospels actually said was: don't kill anyone until you are absolutely sure they aren't well connected.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC
Kurt Vonnegut
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A committee of three can accomplish much if two don't show up.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - God damn it, you've got to be kind.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Unhappy failures need not apply.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The Contessa was surely way ahead of her time, too, in believing that men were not only usless and idiotic, but downright dangerous. That idea wouldn't catch on big in her native country until the last three years of the Vietnam War.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Jokes have to be quite naked to be understood. They have to be quite simple.
Kurt Vonnegut