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Kurt Vonnegut Quotes - Page 13

All Quotes Accidents Age Alcohol Apologizing Army Art Atheism Atheist Belief Bitterness Business Chaos Character Chemistry Children Christ Church College Communication Community Compassion Competition Country Creativity Culture Curiosity Dancing Democracy Design Dignity Doubt Dying Earth Evil Evolution Expectations Feelings Fighting Food Forgiveness Frustration Fun Funny Giving God Happiness Hard Work Hate Heart Heaven Hell Hiroshima Home Humanity Hurt Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Jazz Jesus Laughter Life Literature Loneliness Love Luck Lying Making Love Management Maturity Meaning Of Life Military Mountain Music Nature Opportunity Pain Past Philosophy Politics Progress Purpose Reading Reality Religion Revenge Running Safety School Science Science Fiction Shame Sleep Smoking Socialism Son Soul Students Stupidity Style Survival Teaching Technology Time Today Trade Tragedy Train Universe Waiting Wall War Water Wife Work Writing

Truth can be really powerful stuff if you're not expecting it.

Truth can be really powerful stuff if you're not expecting it.

Powerful, Stuff, Expecting

Source: artisticactivism.org

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.

Whales, People, Greed

Kurt Vonnegut's address to the graduating class at Bennington College, 1970.

Or they'll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics.

Jobs, Fear, Government

Kurt Vonnegut, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur Charles Clarke (1990). “Out of this world: science fiction and fantasy”

I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. ‘This above all ...’

Artist, Want, Impatience

History is merely a list of surprises... It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.

History, Lists, Surprise

"Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!". Book by Kurt Vonnegut (Chapter 48), 1976.

Here is a lesson in writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

Son, Use, Firsts

FaceBook post by Kurt Vonnegut from Sep 26, 2012

Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak, and boy, we've got a lot more beef steak than any other country, and that's why you ought to be glad you're an American. And people have started looking at these big hunks of bloody meat on their plates, you know, and wondering what on earth they think they're doing.

Country, Food, Boys

The city was blacked out because bombers might come, so Billy didn't get to see Dresden do one of the most cheerful things a city can do when the sun goes down, which is to wink its lights on one by one.

Light, Cities, Cheerful

KURT VONNEGUT JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE”

I now believe that the only way in which Americans can rise above their ordinariness, can mature sufficiently to rescue themselves and to help rescue their planet, is through enthusiastic intimacy with works of their own imagination.

Believe, Imagination, Way

No one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

Art, Forgiving, Sides

Kurt Vonnegut (2010). “Look At the Birdie”, p.4, Random House

I'm a doctor of cowshit, pigshit, and chickenshit.....when you doctors figure out what you want, you'll find me out in the barn shoveling my thesis.

Doctors, Barns, Want

My own feeling is that if adultery is wickedness then so is food. Both make me feel so much better afterward.

Feelings, Wickedness, Adultery

Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.87, Penguin

Ideas on earth were badges of friendship or enimity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enimity.

Order, Ideas, Enemy

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Breakfast of Champions: Or, Goodbye Blue Monday!”, CNIB, 197

Teaching, may I say, is the noblest profession of all in a democracy.

Teaching, Democracy, May

Kurt Vonnegut (2013). “If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young”, p.31, RosettaBooks

We'd all do well to start over again, preferably with kindergarten.

Starting Over, Kindergarten, Wells

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Cat's Cradle: A Novel”, p.35, Dial Press

I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.

Sex, Technology, Thinking

Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.17, Seven Stories Press

My ancestors were Freethinkers - and that's what I am, except we're called secular humanists now.

Ancestor, Secular, Freethinker

Laughter or crying is what a human being does when there's nothing else he can do.

Laughter, Tears, Doe

Of course, socialism is just evil now. It's completely discredited supposedly by the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I can't help noticing that my grandchildren are heavily in hock to Communist China now which is evidently a whole lot better at business than we are.

Grandchildren, Evil, Unions

They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.

Slaughterhouse Five, Love One Another, Slaughterhouse 5

KURT VONNEGUT, JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE”

To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.

Art, Practice, Soul

"Finding Soul in LA: Five Creative Adventures in the City" by Roxie Sarhangi, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 18, 2014.

- Why me? - That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber? - Yes. - Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

Slaughterhouse Five, Amber, Matter

Kurt Vonnegut (1969). “Slaughterhouse-five: or, The children's crusade, a duty-dance with death”

There was no immunity to cuckoo ideas on Earth.

Ideas, Cuckoos, Earth

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Breakfast of Champions: Or, Goodbye Blue Monday!”, CNIB, 197

Some jerk infected the Internet with an outright lie. It shows how easy it is to do and how credulous people are.

Lying, People, Internet

"Letters to Ambrose Merton, Issues 13-16". Book by William John Thoms (p. 31), 1998.

Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side.

Hate, Men, Evil

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Mother Night: A Novel”, p.251, Dial Press

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