Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
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I consider anybody a twerp who hasn't read 'Democracy in America' by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.
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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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'You finally fell in love, I see,' said Salo.'Only an Earthling year ago,' said Constant. 'It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
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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 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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If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.
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War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the First World War so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.
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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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You know, in a way I wish I hadn’t met you two. It’s much more convenient to think of the opposition as a nice homogeneous, dead-wrong mass. Now I've got to muddy my thinking with exceptions.
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I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.
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It was in the nature of truly effective good-luck pieces that human beings never really owned them.
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All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.
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Science is magic that works.
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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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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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I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.
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I'm screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I'm funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that's appreciated by young people.
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'I can't help it,' I said. 'My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps right on doing bad, dumb things.''You and your what?' he said.'My soul and my meat,' I said.'They're separate?' he said.'I sure hope they are,' I said. I laughed. 'I would hate to be responsible for what my meat does.'
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And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.
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These displaced people need something, and the clergy can’t give it to them-or it’s impossible for them to take what the clergy offers. The clergy says it’s enough, and so does the Bible. The people say it isn’t enough, and I suspect they’re right.
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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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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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Roses are redAnd ready for pluckingYou're sixteenAnd ready for high school.