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Kurt Vonnegut

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Usually when people talk about the trickle-down theory, it has to do with economics. The richer people at the top of a society become, supposedly, the more wealth there is to trickle down to the people below. It never really works out that way, of course, because if there are 2 things people at the top can't stand, they have to be leakage and overflow.
From Hocus Pocus
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He was talking about the sign that said 'THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.'
'All knew was that I didn't want my daughter or anybody's child to see a message that negative every time she comes into the library,' he said. 'And then I found out it was you who was responsible for it.'
'What's so negative about it?' I said.
'What could be a more negative word than "futility"?' he said.
'"Ignorance,"' I said.
From Hocus Pocus
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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.'
Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
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There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.
From Mother Night
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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'.
From Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons
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Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
From Bagombo Snuff Box
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The champagne was dead. So it goes.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
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Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho.
From Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
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The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people can't.
From Timequake
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You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything–and I advise you to do the same.
From Cat’s Cradle
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To be is to do - Socrates
To do is to be - Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
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Anyway—because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next—and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis—at any time of night or day.
From Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
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Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end.

It flung them like stones.
From The Sirens of Titan
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As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.
From Breakfast of Champions
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When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
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There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.
From God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
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The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.
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The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
From The Sirens of Titan
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No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle.
From Cat’s Cradle
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Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
From Cat’s Cradle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings. so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead.
From Breakfast of Champions
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I say the same thing about the death of James Wait. "Oh, well -- he wasn't going to write the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway.
From Galápagos
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Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Usually when people talk about the trickle-down theory, it has to do with economics. The richer people at the top of a society become, supposedly, the more wealth there is to trickle down to the people below. It never really works out that way, of course, because if there are 2 things people at the top can't stand, they have to be leakage and overflow.
From Hocus Pocus
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He was talking about the sign that said 'THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.'
'All knew was that I didn't want my daughter or anybody's child to see a message that negative every time she comes into the library,' he said. 'And then I found out it was you who was responsible for it.'
'What's so negative about it?' I said.
'What could be a more negative word than "futility"?' he said.
'"Ignorance,"' I said.
From Hocus Pocus
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.'
Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.
From Mother Night
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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'.
From Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
From Bagombo Snuff Box
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The champagne was dead. So it goes.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho.
From Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people can't.
From Timequake
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything–and I advise you to do the same.
From Cat’s Cradle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To be is to do - Socrates
To do is to be - Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Anyway—because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next—and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis—at any time of night or day.
From Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end.

It flung them like stones.
From The Sirens of Titan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.
From Breakfast of Champions
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.
From God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
From The Sirens of Titan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle.
From Cat’s Cradle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
From Cat’s Cradle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings. so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead.
From Breakfast of Champions
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I say the same thing about the death of James Wait. "Oh, well -- he wasn't going to write the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway.
From Galápagos
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Usually when people talk about the trickle-down theory, it has to do with economics. The richer people at the top of a society become, supposedly, the more wealth there is to trickle down to the people below. It never really works out that way, of course, because if there are 2 things people at the top can't stand, they have to be leakage and overflow.
From Hocus Pocus
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He was talking about the sign that said 'THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.'
'All knew was that I didn't want my daughter or anybody's child to see a message that negative every time she comes into the library,' he said. 'And then I found out it was you who was responsible for it.'
'What's so negative about it?' I said.
'What could be a more negative word than "futility"?' he said.
'"Ignorance,"' I said.
From Hocus Pocus
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.'
Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.
From Mother Night
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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'.
From Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
From Bagombo Snuff Box
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The champagne was dead. So it goes.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho.
From Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people can't.
From Timequake
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything–and I advise you to do the same.
From Cat’s Cradle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To be is to do - Socrates
To do is to be - Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Anyway—because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next—and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis—at any time of night or day.
From Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end.

It flung them like stones.
From The Sirens of Titan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.
From Breakfast of Champions
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.
From God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
From The Sirens of Titan
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle.
From Cat’s Cradle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
From Cat’s Cradle
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings. so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead.
From Breakfast of Champions
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I say the same thing about the death of James Wait. "Oh, well -- he wasn't going to write the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway.
From Galápagos
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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