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91c3e4a
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You know what the trouble is with New York?" she asked me. "No," I said. "Nobody here," she said, "believes that there is such a thing as innocence."
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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7ac8c36
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I can only reply that the secret to success in every human endeavor is total concentration. Ask any great athlete.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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622d28d
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What makes so many Americans proud of their ignorance? They act as though their ignorance somehow made them charming.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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0f02166
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Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension, by Kilgore Trout.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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a9e33b3
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That is kind of like what I do," she said. She was demure about what she did. What she did was make people comfortable while she killed them."
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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0f4431b
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The therapist, after a deeply upsetting investigation of normality at this time and place, was bound to conclude that a normal person, functioning well on the upper levels of a prosperous, industrialized society, can hardly hear his conscience at all.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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95e0aa9
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I spoke one time at the Library of Congress, in 1972, or so. A man stood up in the middle of the audience, when I was about halfway through, and he said, "What right have you, as leader of America's young people, to make those people so cynical and pessimistic?" I had no good answer, so I left the stage. Talk about profiles in courage!"
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youth
leadership
pessimism
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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26984ba
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No respecter of evidence has ever found the least clue as to what life is all about, and what people should do with it. Oh, there have been lots of brilliant guesses. But honest, educated people have to identify with them as such--as guesses. What are guesses worth? Scientifically and legally, they are not worth doodley-squat. As the saying goes: "Your guess is as good as mine." The guesses we like best, as with so many things we like best,..
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secular-education
life
wisdom
theories
meaning-of-life
skepticism
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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6886ff6
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Be warned: If you allow yourself to see dignity in someone, you have doomed yourself to wanting to understand and help whoever it is. "If you see dignity in anything, in fact--it doesn't have to be human--you will still want to understand it and help it. Many people are now seeing dignity in the lower animals and the plant world and waterfalls and deserts--and even in the entire planet and its atmosphere. And now they are helpless not to wa..
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understanding
empathy
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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6e23917
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I don't know whether I agree or not. I just have trouble understanding how truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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c9a65b8
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I tried to write a story about a reunion between my father and myself in heaven one time. An early draft of this book in fact began that way. I hoped in the story to become a really good friend of his. But the story turned out perversely, as stories about real people we have known often do. It seemed that in heaven people could be any age they liked, just so long as they had experienced that age on Earth. Thus, John D. Rockefeller, for exam..
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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80020a3
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Das Reich der Zwei, the nation of two my Helga and I had--its territory, the territory we defended so jealously, didn't go much beyond the bounds of our great double bed. Flat, tufted, springy little country, with my Helga and me for mountains. And, with nothing in my life making sense but love, what a student of geography I was! What a map I could draw for a tourist a micron high, a submicroscopic Wandervogel bicycling between a mole and a..
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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361451e
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You hate America, don't you?' 'That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, plea..
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personality
boundaries
elves-and-pixies
imaginary
real-estate
virtues-and-vices
pains
pleasures
flaws
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |