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
christian teacher thinking
If I were a physics teacher or a science teacher, it'd be on my mind all the time as how the hell we really got this way. It's a perfectly natural human thought and, okay, if you go into the science class you can't think this. Well, alright, as soon as you leave you can start thinking about it again without giving aid and comfort to the lunatic fringe of the Christian religion.
teacher editors long
There were creative-writin g teachers long before there were creative-writin g courses, and they were called and continue to be called editors.
teacher children pride
But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crimes. For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.
teacher book writing
There is this thing called the university, and everybody goes there now. And there are these things called teachers who make students read this book with good ideas or that book with good ideas until that's where we get our ideas. We don't think them; we read them in books. I like Utopian talk, speculation about what our planet should be, anger about what our planet is. I think writers are the most important members of society, not just potentially but actually. Good writers must have and stand by their own ideas.
brought chemistry english scientific teacher
I was a chemistry major, but I'm always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I've brought scientific thinking to literature. There's been very little gratitude for this.
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.