So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.
("Breakfast of Champions")
More Quotes from Kurt Vonnegut:
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.Kurt Vonnegut
A writer off-guard since the materials with which he works are so dangerous can expect agony as quick as a thunderclap.
Kurt Vonnegut
Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.
Kurt Vonnegut
Honest to God, Bill, the way things are going, all I can think of is that I'm a character in a book by somebody who wants to write about somebody who suffers all the time.
Kurt Vonnegut
The city was blacked out because bombers might come, so Billy didn't get to see Dresden do one of the most cheerful things a city can do when the sun goes down, which is to wink its lights on one by one.
Kurt Vonnegut
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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Based on Topics: People Quotes, Thought & Thinking QuotesThe mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson
When I was five years old, my parents gave me a magic chest. I learned to cast spells, although of a childish kind, before I had learned to read and write.
Wolfgang Hildesheimer
I bet some of you feel sorry for me. Well don't. Having an artificial leg has its advantages. I've broken my right knee many times and it doesn't hurt a bit.
Terry Fox