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Kurt Vonnegut Quotes - Page 25

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

If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story

If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is.

Years, Ordinary, Stories

The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people can't.

Religious, Class, Luxury

Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “Timequake”, p.74, Random House

George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography.

Students, Geography, Knows

Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.99, Seven Stories Press

For a Russian to be chivalrous with an American is a spiritual impossibility, a conradiction in terms.

Spiritual, Term, Inconsistency

Because of the movies nobody will believe that it was babies who fought the war.

Baby, War, Believe

Kurt Vonnegut (1987). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, New York : Delacorte Press

It was a thunderingly beautiful experience-voluptuous, sexual, dangerous, and expensive as hell.

Beautiful, Hell, Dangerous

Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.99, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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.

Twenties, Hiroshima, Happened

FaceBook post by Kurt Vonnegut from Apr 22, 2015

And we all vied, in saving face, to be the greatest student of human nature, the person with the quickest sense of humor.

Saving, Faces, Students

No matter how wonderful a sentence is, if it doesn't add new and useful information, it should be removed.

Add, Information, Matter

Hardly anyone in the world is an American

World

Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.

Writing, People, Thank God

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

And I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this are the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.

Baby, Reading, Grandchildren

People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.

Art, Writing, Order

After that demonstration everybody was thinking, what's going to happen to these wonderful men who have been so useful to us? We have to give people something to do with life.

Men, Thinking, People

There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore.

Brother, Book, Needs

Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.

People, Want, Said

Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian”, p.10, Seven Stories Press

After the First World War, Germany was trying to build a democracy. Then when the Reichstag, the legislature, was burned down in 1933, this was seen as such an emergency that human rights had to be suspended. The attack on the World Trade Towers has allowed Bush and his gang to do anything. What are we to do now? I say when there's a code red, we should all run around like chickens with our heads cut off. I don't feel that we are in any great danger.

Running, War, Cutting

Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. June 12, 2003.

There were lots of things to stop and see-and then it was time to go, always time to go.

KURT VONNEGUT JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE”

What a fool I would have been to let self-respect interfere with my happiness!

Self, Fool, Has Beens

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.168, Dial Press

I think jokes are a perfectly viable form of literature. Some critics take issue with me because I make my points and discuss my ideas with jokes, rather than with oceanic tragedy.

Thinking, Ideas, Issues

"The Best Jokes Are Dangerous, An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut, Part Three". Interview with J. Rentilly, www.mcsweeneys.net. September 18, 2002.

You have never seen greatness in a Presidency; I have. It was a rich kid who you would think had every reason to be a horse's ass - Franklin Roosevelt. He was humane and wise and resourceful. He was called a traitor to his class.

Wise, Horse, Kids

Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. June 12, 2003.

Honest to God, Bill, the way things are going, all I can think of is that I'm a character in a book by somebody who wants to write about somebody who suffers all the time.

Book, Character, Writing

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

Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.

Writing, Alive, Sacred

"Breakfast of Champions". Book by Kurt Vonnegut, 1973.

I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please - a little less love, and a little more common decency."

Life, Breakup, Fighting

Kurt Vonnegut (2010). “Slapstick or Lonesome No More”, p.2, Random House

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

Slaughterhouse Five, Slaughterhouse 5, Slaughter House Five

KURT VONNEGUT JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE”

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