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Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

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Famous Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

“I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still. Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’ I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.”

ThinkingKnowsWorldMaySaidStillsWarSometimesStoriesFatherDifferencesTeachingStudentsTaughtCollegeDiedUniversityRidiculousWar Of The WorldsDepartmentChicagoVillainWorld War IDisgustingAnthropologySecond World WarFather DiedMy Father Died
Book:SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE
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“Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself -- will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows -- some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history -- But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.”

ThinkingKnowsHas BeensSaidI CanFactsGrowsCan DoBornMissingMachinesPraiseTeethDestroyedMy ThoughtsGod KnowsGearsMother Night
Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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“I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy - because we're experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that's what's going on now.”

KnowsGivingYearsWantedPoliticsBitsDemocracyLessonsHundredOkayVoteSlaveIraqFiftyGenocideCleansingEthnic Cleansing
Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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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.”

KnowsLeaderVirtueStudentsProudExerciseOptimismTiredIraqCoreIgnorantMaking MoneyVietnamCynicalTrustedIdealismMistakenForeignersVietnam WarYaleBeing Ignorant
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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“About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which mean, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead.”

KnowsMayMeanPersonsChristianBeliefReligiousExpectationsRewardsPunishmentBehaveHumanistAfterlifeReligious Person
Book:God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
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“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.”

PeopleKnowsLittlesReasonFallTruth IsNewsMasterpieceGood NewsBad NewsRise And FallBlackboard
Book:A Man Without a Country
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