Kurt Vonnegut
American novelist (1922 to 2007), author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions; a senior editor of In These Times until his death, writing the columns collected in A Man Without a Country (2005).
Everything they publish, on ppll ↗
Kurt Vonnegut did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
The line under a date shows how recently it was said: empty within a month, full after three years.
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Their wordsSome of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting.
↗Your Guess Is as Good as Mine (In These Times, 2005)inthesetimes.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsBut let me warn you, if you make use of the vast fund of knowledge now available to educated persons, you are going to be lonesome as hell.
↗Your Guess Is as Good as Mine (In These Times, 2005)inthesetimes.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 19 months earlier
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Their wordsBut I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power.
↗Cold Turkey (In These Times, 2004)inthesetimes.com 1st of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsFor some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings.
↗Cold Turkey (In These Times, 2004)inthesetimes.com 2nd of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsThere is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
↗Cold Turkey (In These Times, 2004)inthesetimes.com 3rd of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsAll great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.
↗Cold Turkey (In These Times, 2004)inthesetimes.com 4th of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsMy government’s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.
↗Cold Turkey (In These Times, 2004)inthesetimes.com 5th of 6 in this piece
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Our reading
The industrialized world is hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and they will soon run out
Their wordsWhen you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those.
↗Cold Turkey (In These Times, 2004)inthesetimes.com 6th of 6 in this piece
The line under a date fills as the words age, a quarter at a time: past a month, six months, a year, and three years. Empty means said within the last month; full, more than three years ago. It says when, not whether it still holds — a change of mind is marked on the claim itself.
Dashed means we only know the words existed by that date; they may be older.