Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.


Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be. -Kurt Vonnegut.
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Scum of the Earth as some may be in their daily lives, they can all be saints in emergencies.
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As Richard Pryor was to Eddie Murphy, that's what Kurt Vonnegut was to me.
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Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but...
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Love without conditions, restrictions, or the expectation of being loved in return.
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A walk?" said Catharine.
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Society is more concerned with material possessions than it is with the true love and compassion of ...
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The most radical, audacious thing to think is that there might be some point to working hard and thi...
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In nature there are neither rewards nor punishment - there are consequences.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishment; there are consequences.
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I really began to love to read while in high school, and my favorite authors were my heroes: J.D. Sa...
LOUIS SACHAR
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JOHN GREEN
Kurt Vonnegut said, 'The best of Bob and Ray is virtually indistinguishable from the worst.'...
BOB ELLIOTT
Princes give rewards with their own hands,
But death or punishment by the hands of other.
JOHN WEBSTER
Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.
CHUANG TZU
Tiek uzskatīts, ka pēc apkaušanas jāvalda kapa klusumam, un valda jau arī, tikai putni klaigā.
KURT VONNEGUT
If you take my stuff apart, you'll find my choruses of repetitions are picked up almost verbatim...
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They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important - that they are import...
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You stand for what is right, Lina, without the expectation of gratitude or reward.
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There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
What gets me most about these people, Daddy, isn't how ignorant they are, or how much they drink. It...
KURT VONNEGUT
They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
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Being alive isn't about breathing or being organic. Being alive means that you can freely make choic...
BRANDON CHRISTOPHER
What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than ...
MARK VONNEGUT
My theory is that Kurt had a lot of residual pain from his childhood. And when you pile that on top ...
CHARLES J. SHIELDS
Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly t...
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To love without need or without expectation of restitution, that is how we ought to love.
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So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinkin...
KURT VONNEGUT
I do not share the wish to see my language dead and decently buried.
DOUGLAS HYDE
Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want peop...
CARL SAGAN
The mistake you make, don't you see,is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being c...
GEORGE ORWELL
Being assertive does not mean attacking or ignoring others feelings. It means that you are willing t...
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MARK UDALL
I was brought up in the Boys' Brigade and grew up not swearing. It's so lovely to behave dec...
JIMMY HILL
Without a specific reason for the consumer to behave, without a reward or benefit, the overwhelmed c...
SETH GODIN
There's so much joy in being able to contribute a little bit, ... It's not a lot of time or money bu...
BETH BATES
I want the people of New Jersey to jump off a cliff like Kurt Vonnegut so I can show them how to fly...
RICHIE SAMBORA
For a decade or more after the Vietnam war, the people who had guided the U.S. to disaster decently ...
JAMES FALLOWS
My favorite book is anything by Kurt Vonnegut - he's my literary hero. I got to meet him several...
STEVEN WRIGHT
The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as being a man means looking the w...
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You are only as beautiful as the many beautiful things you do for others without expectation.
JANELLE MONAE
Lack of etiquette and manners is a huge turn off. Men who don't behave decently are irritating. ...
SHRADDHA KAPOOR
By no means are we dead or in a position of where we're just going to roll over and walk away.
ED HERNANDO
In some extremely important ways, people are what you expect them to be, or at least they behave as ...
NAOMI WEISSTEIN
Question to you – who will remember you after you are dead?
VIKRANT PARSAI
A man who offers to cook after he's seen you trying to freeze a dead dog has to be at least a little...
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People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of th...
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Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.
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The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy...
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I just want silence... nothing less... nothing more.
DEYTH BANGER
Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and wi...
EMMA GOLDMAN
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not
understand the power and ...
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CHUCK PALAHNIUK
And do not make your oaths a means of deceit between you, lest a foot should slip after its stabilit...
QURAN
Stay mad, but behave like normal people. Run the risk of being different, but learn to do so without...
PAULO COELHO
You're trying not to get a read on whether he's coming after you or not coming after you,
PAUL KONERKO
I can claim copyright only in myself, and occasionally in those who are either dead or have written ...
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
I love playing serious! That's a relief for me. It means something. It sounds dead corny and che...
LAUREN SOCHA
We are still trying to get a handle on this. What if we find a couple of dead birds or a barn full o...
ERIC DIETZ
You are a guest of nature - behave.
FRIEDENSREICH HUNDERTWASSER
You know you're being yourself when you 'please' without trying (so hard).
MITTA XININDLU
Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dea...
HENRY MILLER
I think the writing for this book is extraordinary. And that's why we call it 'Above and Beyond,' be...
ANDREW CARROLL
To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we ...
WILLIAM HAZLITT
To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we...
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A person who has been punished is not less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how...
B. F. SKINNER
Start doing the things you think should be done, and start being what you think society should becom...
ADAM MICHNIK
Capital punishment: them without the capital get the punishment.
JOHN SPENKELINK
Act without expectation.
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You think being dead inside is bad until someone brings you back to life and stabs you in the chest ...
DENICE ENVALL
The tricky part of any lie is trying to figure out how you'd behave if you were innocent.
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[...] as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out [...] the literary novel has become extraordinarily privatistic o...
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In the corrupt court there is no possibility to dream or to make contact to love. They are exiled to...
DEAN GILMOUR
Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly.
GEORGE WILL
A desert is a place without expectation.
NADINE GORDIMER
Many without punishment, none without sin.
JOHN RAY
Many without punishment, none without sin
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We feel that we can answer the expectation of the president, ... What we are trying to do is impress...
SHIMON PERES
I'm going to try and model myself after Kurt Russell and Jodie Foster.
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Perhaps we're too embarrassed to change or too frightened of the consequences of showing that we act...
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A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best...
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It is not about "life after death" as such. Rather, it's a way of talking about being bodily alive a...
N.T. WRIGHT
Fuck you and them... I don't like this rules!
DEYTH BANGER
Outside of a couple of times I ran without eating right or being too tired, I always feel great afte...
FLEA
One of the great rewards of a writer's life is that it lets you read all the books you want to w...
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There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These thin...
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Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do ...
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The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them re...
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We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
If somebody says, ''I love you,'' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What ca...
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
High School is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much wi...
KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
As Bokonon says: 'peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god.
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
Christ, back in Chicago, we don’t make bicycles any more. It’s all
human relations now. The...
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be rea...
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak, and boy, we've got a lot more beef steak than any othe...
KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
Everything about life is a joke. Don't you know that?
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
Popular as he was as a graduation speaker, Vonnegut never graduated from college.
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
Men want a lot of pals—and they don’t want people to get mad at them.
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize there are six seasons instead of four. The poe...
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
My cash cows, the slick magazines, were put out of business by TV.
KURT VONNEGUT
I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the ki...
KURT VONNEGUT
Oh, sure, we have another world war coming, and another great depression, but where are the leaders ...
KURT VONNEGUT
Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been...
KURT VONNEGUT
If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely y...
KURT VONNEGUT
There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.
KURT VONNEGUT
I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
KURT VONNEGUT
I let the dog out, or I let him in, and we talk some. I let him know I like him, and he lets me know...
KURT VONNEGUT
If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
KURT VONNEGUT
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
KURT VONNEGUT
Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudic...
KURT VONNEGUT
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thin...
KURT VONNEGUT
Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn't always so ...
KURT VONNEGUT
People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll h...
KURT VONNEGUT
If somebody says, I love you, to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can an...
KURT VONNEGUT
I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day. Nine to twelve in the morning, five to six in the evenin...
KURT VONNEGUT
Thinking doesn't seem to help very much. The human brain is too high-powered to have many practical ...
KURT VONNEGUT
What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and c...
KURT VONNEGUT
The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowled...
KURT VONNEGUT
Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak, and boy, we've got a lot more beef steak than any othe...
KURT VONNEGUT
... this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so inc...
KURT VONNEGUT
The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much wi...
KURT VONNEGUT
We are all what we pretend to be, but, we had better be very careful what we pretend.
KURT VONNEGUT
I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a ver...
KURT VONNEGUT
I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds o...
KURT VONNEGUT
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
KURT VONNEGUT
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than befo...
KURT VONNEGUT
People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have...
KURT VONNEGUT
There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos inste...
KURT VONNEGUT
There's only one me, and I'm stuck with him.
KURT VONNEGUT
I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled Science Fiction and I would like out, par...
KURT VONNEGUT
Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
KURT VONNEGUT
Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us hu...
KURT VONNEGUT
There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to have without reser...
KURT VONNEGUT
Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but...
KURT VONNEGUT
It was a thunderingly beautiful experience -- voluptuous, sexual, dangerous, and expensive as hell.
KURT VONNEGUT
We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrol...
KURT VONNEGUT
Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.
KURT VONNEGUT
Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this messag...
KURT VONNEGUT
Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to rem...
KURT VONNEGUT
I have no degree in biochemistry, neither do I have one in mechanical engineering, as the Army saw f...
KURT VONNEGUT
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the countr...
KURT VONNEGUT
What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American f...
KURT VONNEGUT
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since...
KURT VONNEGUT