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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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Inspirational
The champagne was dead. So it goes.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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!
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope, Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
To be is to do - Socrates
To do is to be - Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Relationships
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
As Mary delivered what was to be her last lecture about the Galapagos Islands, she would be stopped mid-sentence for five seconds by a doubt which, if expressed in words, might have come out something like this: "Maybe I'm just a crazy lady who had wandered off the street and into this classroom and started explaining the mysteries of life to these people. And they believe me, although I am utterly mistaken about simply everything."

She had to wonder, too, about all the supposedly great teachers of the past, who, although their brains were healthy, had turned out to be as wrong as Roy about what was really going on.
From Galápagos
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational, Philosophical
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.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
From The Sirens of Titan
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life, Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life, Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Inspirational
The champagne was dead. So it goes.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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!
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope, Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
To be is to do - Socrates
To do is to be - Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Relationships
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
As Mary delivered what was to be her last lecture about the Galapagos Islands, she would be stopped mid-sentence for five seconds by a doubt which, if expressed in words, might have come out something like this: "Maybe I'm just a crazy lady who had wandered off the street and into this classroom and started explaining the mysteries of life to these people. And they believe me, although I am utterly mistaken about simply everything."

She had to wonder, too, about all the supposedly great teachers of the past, who, although their brains were healthy, had turned out to be as wrong as Roy about what was really going on.
From Galápagos
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational, Philosophical
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.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
From The Sirens of Titan
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life, Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life, Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Inspirational
The champagne was dead. So it goes.
From Slaughterhouse-Five
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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!
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope, Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
To be is to do - Socrates
To do is to be - Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Relationships
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
As Mary delivered what was to be her last lecture about the Galapagos Islands, she would be stopped mid-sentence for five seconds by a doubt which, if expressed in words, might have come out something like this: "Maybe I'm just a crazy lady who had wandered off the street and into this classroom and started explaining the mysteries of life to these people. And they believe me, although I am utterly mistaken about simply everything."

She had to wonder, too, about all the supposedly great teachers of the past, who, although their brains were healthy, had turned out to be as wrong as Roy about what was really going on.
From Galápagos
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational, Philosophical
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.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
From The Sirens of Titan
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life, Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life, Philosophical
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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