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f2cc57c
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After all that men have done to the women and children and every other defenseless thing on this planet, it is time that not just every painting, but every piece of music, every statue, every play, every poem and book a man creates, should say only this: 'We are much too horrible for this nice place. We give up. We quit. The End!
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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ee1a6b5
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think I am trying to make my head as empty as it was when I was born onto this damaged planet fifty years ago.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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97b6937
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Kogda ia zagnal svoi kosmicheskii korabl' v khrono-sinklasticheskii infundibulum, menia mgnovenno ozarilo soznanie, chto vse kogda-libo byvshee prebudet vechno. a vse, chto budet, sushchestvovalo ispokon vekov.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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a26fda1
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Diadek, u vsekh durakov odna beda -- po krainei gluposti oni dazhe ne predstavliaiut sebe, chto na svete est' takaia shtuka, kak zdravyi smysl.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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7f8ebbb
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Ia ZhERTVA TsEPI NESChASTNYKh SLUChAINOSTEI, KAK I VSE MY.
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life
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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9ddb2fc
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Skol'ko let proshlo, poka my poniali, chto smysl chelovecheskoi zhizni -- kto by chelovekom ni upravlial, -- tol'ko v tom, chtoby liubit' tekh, kto riadom s toboi, kto nuzhdaetsia v tvoei liubvi.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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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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3d014be
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While the British colonel set Lazzaro's broken arm and mixed plaster for the cast, the German major translated out loud passages from Howard W. Campbell, Jr.'s monograph. Campbell had been a fairly well-known playwright at one time. His opening line was this one: America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, "It ain't no..
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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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. |
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027d828
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You hate America, don't you?" she said. "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 v..
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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1a1339e
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Well, I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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e841ad8
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My theory is that all women have hydrofluoric acid bottled up inside.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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b110403
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Everybody's shaking in his boots, so don't be bluffed.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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b86b6a1
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He ransacked his memory like a thief going through another man's billfold.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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45ad324
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I can think of no more stirring symbol of man's humanity to man than a fire engine.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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8f64538
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It was in the nature of truly effective good-luck pieces that human beings never really owned them.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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c927039
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Make love when you can. It's good for you.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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01389ac
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Pretend to be good always, and even God will be fooled.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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a29d4b3
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I never knew a writer's wife who wasn't beautiful.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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2962c25
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No grown woman is a fan of premature ejaculation.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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3e0adb5
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And so on.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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4c396be
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Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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f6fcce2
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Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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e0ecc99
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Like most science-fiction writers, Trout knew almost nothing about science.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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3bed745
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What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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09890df
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You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages -- they haven't ended yet.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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14ea425
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Belief is nearly the whole of the Universe, whether based on truth or not.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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4a46cbb
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It is a gruesome Disneyland. Nobody is cute there.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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c5a4d6a
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When the excrement hit the air conditioner (Recurring phrase throughout many chapters)
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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e49bdb5
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If facts weren't funny, or scary, or couldn't make you rich, the heck with them.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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5f0d926
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See the nigger fly the airplane!
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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6d6e2f5
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They're playin our song Gene!
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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d69d710
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How embarrassing to be human.
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Kurt Vonnegut |