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My ancestors were Freethinkers - and that's what I am, except we're called secular humanists now.

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.
Freethinkers
Humanists
Freethinker
Ancestors
Ancestor
Secular
Except
Called

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And what is literature, Rabo, he said, but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the universe but a few molecules who have the disease called 'thought'.
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You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. 'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.
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The paintings by dead men who were poor most of their lives are the most valuable pieces in my collection. And if an artist wants to really jack up the prices of his creations, may I suggest this: suicide.
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I learned how to make jokes because I wanted to give people as much fun as they did, and I guess I did, too.
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Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is.
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Do you think Arabs are dumb? They gave us our numbers. Try doing long division with Roman numerals.
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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
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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 German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people can't.
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Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.
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I'm mad about being old and I'm mad about being American. Apart from that, OK.
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The slaves were simply turned loose without any property. They were easily recognizable. They were black. They were suddenly free to go exploring.
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In the middle of Siberia I guess there's a lake that big [ like the Great Lakes], but there are practically no other lakes that big with fresh water.
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During the Vietnam War, Abbie Hoffman announced that the new high was banana peels taken rectally. So then FBI scientists stuffed banana peels up their asses to find out if this was true or not.
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The only thing I ever learned was that some people are lucky and other people aren't and not even a graduate of the Harvard Business School can say why.
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In the water I am beautiful.
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I wasn't aware of Ku Klux Klan as I was aware of the widespread assumption that African-Americans were dumber than white people. I think my father believed that. I think everybody white did.
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There were creative-writin g teachers long before there were creative-writin g courses, and they were called and continue to be called editors.
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The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.
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We have such a young culture that there is an opportunity to contribute wonderful new myths to it, which will be accepted.
Kurt Vonnegut