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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
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More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?
Kurt Vonnegut
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The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't let her. Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on? she asked me. The big show is inside my head, I said.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now.' That's my favorite joke.
Kurt Vonnegut
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So many people think that practicing an art is a good way to make a living. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. I'm talking about singing in the shower, I'm talking about dancing to the radio, I'm talking about writing a poem to a friend.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Well, it's an ancestral tribe. These were immigrants from north of Germany who came here about the time of the Civil War, but anyway, these people called themselves free thinkers. They were impressed, incidentally, by Darwin. They're called Humanists now people who aren't so sure that the Bible is the Word of God.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The Fourteenth Book is entitled, What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years? It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: Nothing.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems ... This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry-or laugh.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I wanted all things to seem to make some sense, So we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense. And I made up lies, so they all fit nice, and I made this sad world a paradise
Kurt Vonnegut
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As Marilee and I were dressing, I whispered to her that I loved her with all my heart. What else was there to say? 'You don't. You can't,' she said.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
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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Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Kurt Vonnegut
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How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The polls demonstrate that 50 percent of Americans who get their news from TV think Saddam Hussein was behind the Twin Towers attack. Man, have they got ways for getting half-truths out right away now, thanks to TV! I think TV is a calamity in a democracy.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
Kurt Vonnegut
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... life, by definition, is never still.
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?
Kurt Vonnegut