"For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!"
"Einstein's E=mc2 is an extraordinary concept. So radical: matter and energy are two phases of the same sort of general stuff. There's only one other idea that radical: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."
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Source: Thoughts of a Free Thinker. Kurt Vonnegut's commencement address at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (May 26, 1974), as quoted in Kurt Vonnegut Palm Sunday, 1981.
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"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."
"There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president."
"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."
"He didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo."