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Any scientist who can't explain to an eight-year-old what he is doing is a charlatan.

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.
Charlatan
Charlatans
Explain
Scientist
Eight
Year
Years

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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You know what truth is? [...] It's some crazy thing my neighbor believes. If I want to make friends with him, I ask him what he believes. He tells me, and I say, Yeah, yeah - ain't it the truth?
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People are lying all the time as to what a murderous nation we are. So let it be known. We're behaving abominably. It's like having a relative go absolutely nuts. Somebody has to say, I think Uncle Charlie's off his rocker. We are behaving in a bizarre manner.
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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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Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before, Bokonon tells us. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
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Just in the nick of time they realized that it was their own habitat they were wrecking -- that they weren't merely visitors.
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Some jerk infected the Internet with an outright lie. It shows how easy it is to do and how credulous people are.
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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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Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There is nothing left of him but curiosity and a pair of eyes.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
Kurt Vonnegut
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And we all vied, in saving face, to be the greatest student of human nature, the person with the quickest sense of humor.
Kurt Vonnegut
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You are reading a bold and universal headline which says ,’I am here, I am here, I am here.
Kurt Vonnegut
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No one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I paraphrase Aristotle: If you want to be comical, write about people to whom the audience can feel superior if you want to be tragical, write about at least one person to whom the audience is bound to feel inferior, and no fair having human problems solved by dumb luck or heavenly intervention.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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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In 1844, Karl Marx said, Religion is the opiate of the masses. He said this at a time when opium and opium derivatives were the only painkillers. And he said it helped a little. He might as well have said, Religion is the aspirin of the people.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I love cell phones. I see people so happy and proud, walking around. Gesturing, you know. I'm like Karl Marx, I'm up for anything that makes people happy.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The only proof he needed for the existance of God was music.
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They were lovebirds. They entertained each other endlessly with little gifts: sights worth seeing out the plane window, amusing or instructive bits from things they read, random recollections of times gone by. They were, I think, a flawless example of what Bokonon calls a duprass, which is a karass composed of only two persons.
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The painting was framed in a misty view of sky, sea, and valley. Newt's painting was small, black, and warty. It consisted of scratches made in a black, gummy impasto. The scratches formed a sort of spider's web, and I wondered if they might not be the sticky nets of human futility hung up on a moonless night to dry.
Kurt Vonnegut