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Quotes of the Day for 11 November 2008 – Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr was born at Indianapolis on this day in 1922. In high school he wrote for the daily school paper, then went on to Cornell but couldn't connect with the subjects his father had pushed him to pursue although he enjoyed writing for the Cornell Daily Sun. He joined the army and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He survived the fire bombing of Dresden huddled in an underground meat locker, the genesis of Slaughterhouse Five. After the war he studied anthropology at the University of Chicago where the faculty unanimously rejected his thesis in 1946 - they decided to grant his Masters degree in 1971 based on Cat's Cradle. Vonnegut turned to writing full time in 1951 with great success starting in the '60s. I'm one of many that will always display a wry smile when I hear the phrase "Breakfast of Champions."
The quotes:
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.
I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.
Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules - and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.
All from Kurt Vonnegut Jr, 1922 - 2007
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