Kurt Vonnegut Quotes - Page 6

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• During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in - and which we lost - every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Country, War, Artist

  "Vonnegut at 80". Interview with David Hoppe, www.nuvo.net. January 1, 2003.

  73 Copy quote

• But there’s a reason we recognize Hamlet as a masterpiece: it’s that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in this rise and fall here [indicates blackboard]. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Fall, People, News

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.37, Seven Stories Press

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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

  Mean, Thinking, People

  Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Deadeye Dick”, Delacorte Press

  5 Copy quote

• Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Thinking, Turkeys, Environmental

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.42, Seven Stories Press

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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

  Fear, Hate, Hard Work

  "Cat's Cradle". Book by Kurt Vonnegut (Chapter 124), 1963.

  20 Copy quote

• The library is full of stories of supposed triumphs which makes me very suspicious of it. It's misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Class, White, People

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “Hocus Pocus”, p.27, Random House

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• Dr. Brainard Keyes Bullard, President of Wyandotte College, said in an address tonight that most of the worlds ills can be traced to the fact that Mans knowledge of himself has not kept pace with his knowledge of the physical world.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  College, President, Drs

  Kurt Vonnegut (2015). “The Big Trip Up Yonder”, p.5, Booklassic

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• What's going to happen is, very soon, we're going to run out of petroleum, and everything depends on petroleum. And there go the school buses. There go the fire engines. The food trucks will come to a halt. This is the end of the world.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Running, School, Fire

  9 Copy quote

• The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  News, Littles, Truth Is

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.37, Seven Stories Press

  9 Copy quote

• Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Moving, Book, Artist

  6 Copy quote

• The First Amendment reads more like a dream than a law, and no other nation, so far as I know, has been crazy enough to include such a dream among its fundamental legal documents. I defend it because it has been so successful for two centuries in preserving our freedom and increasing our vitality, knowing that all arguments in support of it are certain to sound absurd.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Dream, Crazy, Successful

  7 Copy quote

• Human beings will believe in all kinds of things that aren't true, and that's okay. And TV is a part of that.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Believe, Tvs, Kind

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations”, p.138, Melville House

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• Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Civilization, Ideas, Germany

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• I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Sex, Technology, Thinking

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.17, Seven Stories Press

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• The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Humor, Way, Truthful

  Interview with J. Rentilly, www.mcsweeneys.net. September 18, 2002.

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• The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines?

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Country, Lying, Past

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• Do I resent rich people? No. The best or worst I can do is notice them. I agree with the great Socialist writer George Orwell, who felt that rich people were poor people with money.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  People, Rich, Poor

  Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.146, Penguin

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• You can't fight progress. The best you can do is ignore it, until it finally takes your livelihood and self-respect away.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Fighting, Self, Progress

  Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction”, Putnam Publishing Group

  5 Copy quote

• Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Drinking, Beer, Weight Loss

  "Cat's Cradle". Book by Kurt Vonnegut, 1963.

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• The Great Depression was going on, so that the station and the streets teemed with homeless people, just as they do today. The newspapers were full of stories of worker layoffs and farm foreclosures and bank failures, just as they are today. All that has changed, in my opinion, is that, thanks to television, we can hide a Great Depression. We may even be hiding a Third World War.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, People, May

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.92, Dial Press

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• Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people's blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Men, Blood, People

  Kurt Vonnegut (2007). “The Sirens of Titan”, p.176, Dial Press

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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

  Lying, Nice, World

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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

  Plato, What If, Meaning Of Life

  30 Copy quote

• I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Hate, Book, Ideas

  8 Copy quote

• Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Inspirational, Motivational, Atheist

  74 Copy quote

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