"It is a sobering thought that Gomer Pyle and the Beverly Hillbillies may be among our chief interstellar emissaries."
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Quote collection
Kurt Vonnegut quotes (page 41 of 49)
978 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Let there be nothing harmonious about our children's playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive."
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"There is nothing like death to say what is always such an artificial thing to say: The End."
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"But I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got here. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the crazymaking games going on today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls' basketball."
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"You know, I think the main purpose of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps is to get poor Americans into clean, pressed, unpatched clothes, so rich Americans can stand to look at them."
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"I've written about Powers Hapgood. He was a Harvard graduate, son of a wealthy family who owned a cannery out there. After leaving Harvard, he went to work in coal mines and then was a CIO executive when I met him there, in Indianapolis."
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"My special situation was that I was the son and grandson of architects. And so I saw building. We were building the city, and that was exciting."
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"Wake up, you idiots! Whatever made you think that money was so valuable?"
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"Earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided."
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"kar.a.bek.i.an (n.); (from Rabo Karabekian, U.S. 20th Cent. painter). Fiasco in which a person causes total destruction of own work and reputation through stupidity, carelessness or both."
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"If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now.' That's my favorite joke."
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"If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington D.C."
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"It often is a terrible insult to some families if one of the kids turns out to be an artist and that's one way to really shake up the family if you haven't got nerve enough to turn into a homosexual."
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"The trouble with God isn't that He so seldom makes Himself known to us... He's holding you and me and everybody else by the scruff of the neck practically _constantly... Contentedly adrift in the cosmos, were you?... That is a perfect description of a non-epiphany, that rarest of moments, when God Almighty lets go of the scruff of your neck and lets you be human for a little while."
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"Educating a beautiful woman is like pouring honey into a fine Swiss watch: everything stops."
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"I went to high school in Indianapolis I learned how to walk around looking tough because everybody had to do that. I go out there occasionally and they're still doing it, walking around looking very tough because something might happen."
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"I wasn't aware of Ku Klux Klan as I was aware of the widespread assumption that African-Americans were dumber than white people. I think my father believed that. I think everybody white did."
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"In those days great teachers at Shortridge [High School] were celebrities. I would look up to them."
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"I think I succeeded as a writer because I did not come out of an English department. I used to write in the chemistry department. And I wrote some good stuff. If I had been in the English department, the prof would have looked at my short stories, congratulated me on my talent, and then showed me how Joyce or Hemingway handled the same elements of the short story. The prof would have placed me in competition with the greatest writers of all time, and that would have ended my writing career."
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"The champagne was dead. So it goes."
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