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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.
Times
Human
Humans
Think
Thinking
Dumber
Meaner
Beings
Humanity
More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut
I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did.
Kurt Vonnegut
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
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
I never asked to be born in the first place.
Kurt Vonnegut
When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
Kurt Vonnegut
The umpire had comical news. The congregation had been theoretically spotted from the air by a theoretical enemy. They were all theoretically dead now. The theoretical corpses laughed and ate a hearty noontime meal.
Kurt Vonnegut
As a matter of social class Ku Klux Klan would have been regarded as white trash.
Kurt Vonnegut
It seems to me divorce is so common now. It ought to be more institutionalized. It's like a head-on collision every time. It's supposed to be a surprise but it's commonplace.
Kurt Vonnegut
And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
Kurt Vonnegut
But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.
Kurt Vonnegut
The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.
Kurt Vonnegut
If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
Kurt Vonnegut
Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don't read much or think much -- who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could.
Kurt Vonnegut
The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.
Kurt Vonnegut
You are better than you think.
Kurt Vonnegut
It is always pitiful when any human being falls into a condition hardly more respectable than that of an animal. How much more pitiful it is when the person who falls has had all the advantages!
Kurt Vonnegut
They like life alright, but that they would like it even better if they could know that it was going to end sometime.
Kurt Vonnegut
I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays. But they are murdered children all the same.
Kurt Vonnegut
People would be surprised if they knew how much in this world was due to prayers.
Kurt Vonnegut
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