Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 –
April 11, 2007) was an American writer. His works such as Cat's
Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions
(1973) blend satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. As a citizen
he was a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union and
a critical pacifist intellectual.
He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association. The New York Times headline at the time of Vonnegut's passing called Vonnegut "the counterculture's novelist." {more}
He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association. The New York Times headline at the time of Vonnegut's passing called Vonnegut "the counterculture's novelist." {more}
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"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
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"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward."
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"Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be."
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"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."
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"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."
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"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."
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"People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God."
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"The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth."
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"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."
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"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."
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"“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."
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"How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."
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"The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected."
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"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything."
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"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."
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"A sane person to an insane society must appear insane."
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"If somebody says "I love you" to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? "I love you, too."
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"Smoking is the only honorable form of suicide."
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"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.""
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“I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer."
"What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?”
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