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Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

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Famous Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

“Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next--and on and on.”

PeopleHardMomentsFactsBigsActionUniverseNextHeavenLinesOpinionHellSubjectsPaperEvidenceMereBottomIslandsClothingsShelterAlmightyExplosionsStatesmenButchersJuliusReversalPaper MoneyGalapagos Islands
Book:Galapagos: A Novel
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“Vietnam was an exercise in mistaken idealism Iraq in cynical money-making. And there's no optimism or idealism now -- Americans are tired of knowledge. Our leaders, the C-students from Yale, know this. We're proud of being ignorant that leaves virtue at our core. We aren't frazzled by knowledge like foreigners, so we can be trusted.”

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Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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“I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty—and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.”

TakenHappenedColorBrotherComfortableScientistTwentiesPhotographExpectedMagazinesMy BrotherAlmightyMechanicTwenty OneHiroshimaScientific Truth
Book:Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five
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“The prostitutes worked for a pimp now. He was splendid and cruel. He was a god to them. He took their free will away from them, which was perfectly all right. They didn't want it anyway. It was as though they had surrendered themselves to Jesus, for instance, so they could live unselfishly and trustingly-except that they had surrendered to a pimp instead.”

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Book:Breakfast of champions: or, Goodbye blue Monday!
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“A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly lessons about fairness and gentleness. People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. Science has nothing to do with it, friends.”

PeopleWellsMadeStoriesCenturyLessonsGreedExcuseOur TimeAssumptionAdamFairnessIrrelevantScience And ReligionGentlenessTwentieth CenturyWhalesObsoleteAdam And EveJonahHarshness
Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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“But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crimes. For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.”

YearsHumansChildrenStatesAmericaJoyEvilHuman BeingsInterestingUnitedMillionsUnited StatesTeacherSeaCrimeExamplePrideNonsenseContinentsAgain And AgainCheatUnited States Of AmericaImaginativeConcealedPirateBlackboard
Book:Breakfast of champions: or, Goodbye blue Monday!
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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.”

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Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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“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.”

KnowsFirstsHas BeensTwoEnoughDreamLawCertainNationsSoundSupportKnowingSuccessfulCrazyCenturyArgumentFundamentalsAbsurdAmendmentsDocumentsVitalityFirst Amendment
Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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