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Sucker's Portfolio QUOTES

Sucker's Portfolio QUOTES

1 " I asked him once what he believed to be the basic flaw in the character of Germans, and he replied “obedience.” When I consider the ghastly orders obeyed by underlings of Columbus, or of Aztec priests supervising human sacrifices, or of senile Chinese bureaucrats wishing to silence unarmed, peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square only three years ago as I write, I have to wonder if obedience isn’t the basic flaw in most of humankind. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

2 " Ridiculous! Why don’t you go into gunrunning, and sell the ancient Athenians a couple of machine guns so they can win the Peloponnesian War? "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

3 " any technical advance that was conceivable to the mind would one day be made a reality by scientists. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

4 " To “stand around with egg on one’s face” is not to be confused with “standing around with one’s thumb up one’s fundament,” which means not knowing what to do next, as does “not knowing whether to defecate or wind one’s watch. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

5 " The Second Amendment, written by the Anglo James Madison, a slave owner, says, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” As long as the poor people in this country kill each other, which is what so many of them are doing day after day, the federal government, obviously, is content to regard them, as Columbus might have done, as a well-regulated militia. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

6 " Another native German Heinrich, Heinrich Böll, a great writer, and I became friends even though we had once been corporals in opposing armies. I asked him once what he believed to be the basic flaw in the character of Germans, and he replied “obedience "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

7 " When I consider the ghastly orders obeyed by underlings of Columbus, or of Aztec priests supervising human sacrifices, or of senile Chinese bureaucrats wishing to silence unarmed, peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square only three years ago as I write, I have to wonder if obedience isn’t the basic flaw in most of humankind. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

8 " Tempus fugit! It is the day-after-Garbage Day! My three cans are again as vacant and inviting as was Indiana when my immigrant ancestors, without opposition, picked out their homesites there. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

9 " My Daddy says kissing folks in public is the most disgusting thing there is.” The man who had told her that was under indictment for swindling his neighbors and his country out of six million dollars. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

10 " About 20 years ago I wrote an essay that was printed by The New York Times about how inhospitable the moons and asteroids and other planets in the solar system were, so that we would be wise to quit treating this planet as though, in case we wrecked it, there were plenty of spares out there. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

11 " God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” - Sagaponack, 1992 "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

12 " A scientist friend had once remarked audaciously, with a few fingers of whisky in him, that any technical advance that was conceivable to the mind would one day be made a reality by scientists. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

13 " TV was expected to be a great teacher, but its shows are so well done that it has become the only teacher, and an awful teacher, since there is no way for it to make its students learn by doing something. Worst of all, it keeps saying that whatever it has taught in the past doesn’t matter anymore, that it has found something much more entertaining for us to look at. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

14 " Maybe we should have cast her as Saint Joan of Arc,” I said. Sally snorted, and she asked me, “What makes you think Saint Joan of Arc was full of novocain? "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio

15 " Eddie Wetzel was an engineer in charge of making big insulators in the Ceramics Department of the General Forge and Foundry Company in Ilium, New York. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Sucker's Portfolio