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b47c7b4
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How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.
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cat-s
cradle
kurt
vonnegut
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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e37df5b
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I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.
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reading
writing
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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543fa3d
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Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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19ae51a
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That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody's whim of killing Father or Fats or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that being alive is a crock of shit.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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2e51417
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You know what truth is? [...] It's some crazy thing my neighbor believes. If I want to make friends with him, I ask him what he believes. He tells me, and I say, "Yeah, yeah - ain't it the truth?"
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real-life
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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18d2c92
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All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.
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paraphrased
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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ac0e699
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Everything about life is a joke. Don't you know that?
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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9a68c34
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but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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e39ecfb
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this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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0b08222
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OK, now let's have some fun. Let's talk about sex. Let's talk about women. Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything. What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn't get so mad at them. Why are so many people getting divorced today? It's because most of us don't have extended fam..
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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418c6e0
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I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.
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happiness
jailbird
peace
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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89d5797
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If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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0ae0ae0
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Fucking was how babies were made.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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28ef260
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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.
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people
human
life
chemicals
breakfast-of-champions
kurt-vonnegut
body
ugly
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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18a3ba8
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Here's the news: I am going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only twelve years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown & Williamson have promised to kill me. But I am eighty-two. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three m..
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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0619831
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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, pleas..
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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23dad8f
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I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale." George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no ..
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psychopathic-personalities
government
reality-tv
insanity
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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29c2f8d
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As stupid and vicious as men are, this is a lovely day.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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920e50a
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Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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3e6f8df
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I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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7a185f0
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American humorist Kin Hubbard said , "It ain't no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be". The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue... Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any..
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poverty
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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5480547
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I said I wasn't interested, and she was bright enough to say that she wasn't really interested either. As things turned out, we both overestimated our apathies, but not that much.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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54fcb32
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There's only one rule that I know of, babies--God damn it, you've got to be kind.
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philosophy
inspirational
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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19eb3e5
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Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir." he read, "You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next - and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. You are pooped and demoralized, " ..
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free-will
life
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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a39dab5
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Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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daba749
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His response was to fight it with the only weapons at hand--passive resistance and open displays of contempt.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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386e102
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America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.... It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glori..
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poverty
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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4b14036
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I will say, too, that lovemaking, if sincere, is one of the best ideas Satan put in the apple she gave to the serpent to give to Eve. The best idea in that apple, though, is making jazz.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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2fa9e9d
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Only in books do we learn what's really going on.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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9558bf9
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Anyone unable to understand how useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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01eba33
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He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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f803898
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Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules -- and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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6c3ab40
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Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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551f3f3
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So It Goes
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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7c24715
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That's the point. Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. So people getting married think they're wonderful, and that they're going to have a baby-- that's wonderful, when actually they're as ugly as rhinoceroses. Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.
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jack-patton
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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418dcfc
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Goodbye blue Monday.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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b599137
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What is the purpose of life?...To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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0a8817f
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Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her.
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fate
religion
belief
luck
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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ff1bfea
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The most important thing I learnt on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all th..
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time
perception
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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9b21113
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When a couple has an argument nowadays they may think it s about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they're really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: "You are not enough people!"
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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42a5efd
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Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy's wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: "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..
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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7c307cb
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That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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7884d40
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How's the patient?" asked Derby. "Dead to the world." "But not actually dead." "No." "How nice - to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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ad2e7c9
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I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays. But they are murdered children all the same.
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war
patriotism
shame
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Kurt Vonnegut |