Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.was an American author. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth11 November 1922
CountryUnited States of America
believe airplane army
I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade.
army feelings soldier
The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth.
marine army thinking
You know, I think the main purpose of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps is to get poor Americans into clean, pressed, unpatched clothes, so rich Americans can stand to look at them.
cannot deal grumpy offended perhaps rather seen terms
I used to be funny, and perhaps I'm not anymore. It may be that I have become rather grumpy because I've seen so many things that have offended me that I cannot deal with in terms of laughter.
fix peace prospects war winners
THE WINNERS ARE AT WAR WITH THE LOSERS, AND THE FIX IS ON. THE PROSPECTS FOR PEACE ARE AWFUL.
cynical exercise idealism iraq knowledge leaves mistaken optimism proud tired vietnam virtue
Vietnam was an exercise in mistaken idealism; Iraq in cynical money-making. And there's no optimism or idealism now -- Americans are tired of knowledge. Our leaders, the C-students from Yale, know this. We're proud of being ignorant; that leaves virtue at our core. We aren't frazzled by knowledge like foreigners, so we can be trusted.
admire christ extremely god hell human jesus matter speaks spoke whether
Well, to admire the hell out of Jesus Christ or of everyone who speaks well. And, well my grandfather said is-- if-- what Jesus said was marvelous. What does it matter whether he was God or not? And it doesn't matter. So this is a human being who spoke extremely well, and we humanists listened.
arrogance conquer deserve mean
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe.
careful pretend
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
bird himself life man sit tiger
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.
bush line sue
Bush used that line recently. I should sue him for plagiarism.
heart missed purple surviving
But doing that job, surviving it, was like getting a Purple Heart. I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
critics drawer file labeled mistake regularly serious since
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.
country usa ideas
It distresses me deeply that ideas are not to be circulated freely in the USA if certain persons have their way. One of the things that was great about this country was that I could say anything and that everyone else could say anything and we would compare all possible ideas and arrive at opinions.