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I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty—and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.


Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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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