Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
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'We're having a celebration, so all sorts of things have been said which are not true,' I said. 'That's how to act at a party.'
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The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.
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It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.
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I don't think there would be many jokes, if there weren't constant frustration and fear and so forth. It's a response to bad troubles like crime.
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The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth.
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I can have oodles of charm when I want to.
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Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'
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Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.
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What we will be seeking … for the rest of our lives will be large, stable communities of like-minded people, which is to say relatives. They no longer exist. The lack of them is not only the main cause, but probably the only cause of our shapeless discontent in the midst of such prosperity.
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'I tell you, Mr. Constant,' he said genially, 'it’s a thankless job, telling people it’s a hard, hard Universe they’re in.'
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As a Humanist, I love science. I hate superstition, which could never have given us A-bombs.
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If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.
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'All people are insane,' he said. 'They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.'
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Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.
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We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
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During most of my freelancing, I made what I would have made in charge of the cafeteria at a pretty good junior-high school.
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When the excrement hit the air conditioner (Recurring phrase throughout many chapters)
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No grown woman is a fan of premature ejaculation.
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Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.
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The riot, then, was an exercise in science and theology-a seeking after clues by the living as to what life was all about.
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I figured things would be better in Washington, that I'd find a lot of people I admired and belonged with. Washington is worse, Paul-Ilium to the tenth power. Stupid, arrogant, self-congratulatory, unimaginative, humorless men. And the women, Paul-the dull wives feeding on the power and glory of their husbands.
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We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. I used to think that science would save us, and science certainly tried. But we can't stand any more tremendous explosions, either for or against democracy.
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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!
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Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible.