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Kurt Vonnegut Quotes - Page 8

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

You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages--they haven't ended yet.

You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages--they haven't ended yet.

Dark, Age, Want

Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Deadeye Dick”, Delacorte Press

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

Inspirational, Education, Teenager

"Cat's Cradle". Book by Kurt Vonnegut. Chapter 124: Frank's Ant Farm, 1963.

People are lying all the time as to what a murderous nation we are. So let it be known. We're behaving abominably. It's like having a relative go absolutely nuts. Somebody has to say, "I think Uncle Charlie's off his rocker." We are behaving in a bizarre manner.

Uncles, Lying, Thinking

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

You can't fight progress. The best you can do is ignore it, until it finally takes your livelihood and self-respect away.

Fighting, Self, Progress

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction”, Putnam Publishing Group

The biggest laughs are based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears.

Disappointment, Writing, Laughing

Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.90, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

Use, Way, Stranger

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction”, Putnam Publishing Group

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.

Meaningful, Communication, Order

Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.152, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

Character, Imperfection, Hocus Pocus

Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.167, Penguin

Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

Comforting, Comedian, Musician

Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

I just don't think people get off on language anymore. Language used to be an elevated art. It used to be for people what music can be. But people don't learn to do that anymore, so eloquence is merely a matter of waste. Who needs a good vocabulary and proper English? Eloquence - it's dead and who needs it?

Art, Thinking, Vocabulary

Source: www.mcsweeneys.net

You are being suffocated by tradition... Why don't you say, 'I am going to build a life for myself, for my time, and make it a work of art'? Your life isn't a work of art ---it's a thirdhand Victorian whatnot shelf, complete with someone else's collection of seashells and hand-carved elephants.

Art, Hands, Elephants

Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of the awful truth.

Imagination, Awful, Machinery

Kurt Vonnegut (1973). “Breakfast of champions: or, Goodbye blue Monday!”, Dell

In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me.

Sleep, Suits, Hunger

Kurt Vonnegut (2012). “Kurt Vonnegut: Letters”, p.175, Delacorte Press

The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.

Smart, Believe, Dumb

Kurt Vonnegut (2007). “The Sirens of Titan”, p.127, Dial Press

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Years, Law, Stronger

FaceBook post by Kurt Vonnegut from Apr 10, 2016

The most racist, nastiest act by the USA, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki. Not of Hiroshima, which might have had some military significance. But Nagasaki was purely blowing away men, women, and children.

Children, Military, Men

Belief is nearly the whole of the universe whether based on truth or not.

Belief, Whole, Universe

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

The right of the people to peacefully assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances is now worth a pitcher of warm spit. That's because TV will not come and treat it respectfully. Television is really something.

Government, People, Television

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

The trouble with being a secular humanist is that we don't have a congregation. We don't meet so it's a very flimsy tribe, but there's a wonderful quotation from Nietzsche. Nietzsche said, Only a person of deep faith can afford the luxury of skepticism. Something perfectly is going on. I do not doubt it, but the explanations I hear do not satisfy me.

Luxury, Doubt, Tribes

"Kurt Vonnegut Judges Modern Society". "Morning Edition" with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. January 23, 2006.

The computer revolution has allowed white-collar criminals to do what the Mob would have loved to do - put a pawnshop and a loan shark in every home!

Home, Sharks, White

Your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

Writing, Ideas, Doe

Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

This is a nation tragedy, of course - that we've changed from a society to an audience.

Tragedy, Changed, Audience

Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.102, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

Thinking, People, Justice

Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.39, Univ. Press of Mississippi

It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems ... This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry-or laugh.

Memorable, Men, Laughing

Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.91, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Much of the blame is the malarkey that artists have created to glorify war, which as we all know, is nonsense, and a good deal worse than that — romantic pictures of battle, and of the dead and men in uniform and all that. And I did not want to have that story told again.

War, Artist, Men

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