Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
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Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible.
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Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
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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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All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.
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During the war, in hundreds of Iliums over America, managers and engineers learned to get along without their men and women, who went to fight. It was the miracle that won the war - production with almost no manpower. In the patois of the north side of the river, it was the know-how that won the war. Democracy owed its life to know-how.
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I have this theory about why men kill each other and break things. … Never mind. It's a dumb theory. I was going to say it was all sexual … but everything is sexual … but alcohol.
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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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If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.
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And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.
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Busy, busy, busy.
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The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.
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One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
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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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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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During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.
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'I liked him very much,' said Constant.'The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms,' said Beatrice.
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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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Wars would be a lot better, I think, if guys would say to themselves sometimes 'Jesus - I'm not going to do that to the enemy. That's too much.'
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I have become an enthusiast for the printed word again. I have to be that, I now understand, because I want to be a character in all of my works. I can do that in print. In a movie, somehow, the author always vanishes. Everything of mine which has been filmed so far has been one character short, and that character is me.
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The controls were anything but a hunch-player’s delight in a Universe composed of one-trillionth part matter to one decillion parts black velvet futility.
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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 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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Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.
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All the things you are are going to be sued and sued successfully. And, while the litigants may not be able to get blood from turnips, they can certainly ruin the turnips in the process of trying.