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Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons QUOTES

Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons QUOTES

1 " 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'. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

2 " Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well? "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

3 " I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

4 " Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don't read much or think much -- who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

5 " As for national greatness: It is probably true that all nations are great and even holy at the time of death. The Biafrans had never fought before. They fought well this time. They will never fight again. They will never play Finlandia on an ancient marimba again. Peace. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

6 " Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

7 " Its basic axiom is to be followed by individuals as well as great nations, by Losers and Winners alike. We have demonstrated the workability of the axiom in Vietnam, in Bangladesh, in Biafra, in Palestinian refugee camps, in our own ghettos, in our migrant labor camps, on our Indian reservations, in our institutions for the defective and the deformed and the aged. This is it: Ignore agony. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

8 " This is not the case. I find scant evidence in my nonfiction that I have matured at all. I cannot find a single idea I hadn’t swiped from somebody else and enunciated plonkingly by the time I reached the seventh grade. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

9 " About the dumb Earthlings versus the smart Earthlings: I have known a fair number of scientists over the years, and I noticed they were often as bored by each other’s work as dumb people would be. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

10 " It's sort of self-congratulatory to be the person who walks around pitying other people. I don't do that very much. I just know that there are plenty of people who are in terrible trouble and can't get out. And so I'm impatient with those who think that it's easy for people to get out of trouble. I think there are some people who really need a lot of help. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

11 " It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. [...] And it strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that a man can always solve his problems. There is an implication that if you just have a little more energy, a little more fight, the problem can always be solved. That is so untrue that it makes me want to cry--or laugh. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

12 " I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled "science fiction" ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

13 " I just know that there are plenty of people who are in terrible trouble and can't get out. And so I'm impatient with those who think that it's easy for people to get out of trouble. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

14 " Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don't read much or think much -- who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

15 " You understand, of course, that everything I say is horseshit. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

16 " Thinking the guy up ahead knows what he's doing is the most dangerous religion there is. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

17 " Too many of us treat guns with genial familiarity. Guns should give us the heebie-jeebies. They are killing machines. That is all they are. We should dread them the way we dread cancer and cyanide and electric chairs. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

18 " I believe all this, and much, much more, because I guess it is my duty to. But I pay a price for my gaga credulity, which I want to describe as a sort of intellectual seasickness. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

19 " There is a basic rule about tanks, and you should know it: The only man who ever beat a tank was John Wayne. And he was in another tank. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

20 " It is a sobering thought that Gomer Pyle and the Beverly Hillbillies may be among our chief interstellar emissaries. "

― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons