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Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.

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.
Beings
Humanity
Times
Human
Humans
Think
Thinking
Dumber
Meaner

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.
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I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief.
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We could have saved the earth, but we were too damned cheap.
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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.
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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
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there i was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic tv, with virtually no health services for the poor. where to go? what to do?
Kurt Vonnegut
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I keep losing and regaining my equilibrium, which is the basic plot of all popular fiction. And I myself am a work of fiction.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Montana was naked, and so was Billy, of course. He had a tremendous wang, incidentally. You never know who'll get one.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact how hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves.
Kurt Vonnegut
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...Skyscraper National Park
Kurt Vonnegut
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One of [ways being lucky] was to go to school during the Great Depression because teaching became a plum job.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If people insist on living as if there's no tomorrow, there really won't be one.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I think jokes are a perfectly viable form of literature. Some critics take issue with me because I make my points and discuss my ideas with jokes, rather than with oceanic tragedy.
Kurt Vonnegut
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And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I didn't know then what a sperm was, and so wouldn't understand his answer for several years. My boy, he said, you are descended from a long line of determined, resourceful, microscopic tadpoles-- champions every one.
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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You are being suffocated by tradition... Why don't you say, 'I am going to build a life for myself, for my time, and make it a work of art'? Your life isn't a work of art ---it's a thirdhand Victorian whatnot shelf, complete with someone else's collection of seashells and hand-carved elephants.
Kurt Vonnegut