Kurt Vonnegut

Who was Kurt Vonnegut?

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was an American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. As a citizen he was a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union and a critical pacifist intellectual. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.

The New York Times headline at the time of Vonnegut's passing called Vonnegut "the counterculture's novelist."

Famous Quotes:

• 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.
• New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.
• Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand
• We are all what we pretend to be, but, we had better be very careful what we pretend.
• We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
• We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
• It was a thunderingly beautiful experience -- voluptuous, sexual, dangerous, and expensive as hell.
• There's only one me, and I'm stuck with him.
• What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.
• 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.