"Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind."

Kurt Vonnegut Literature See all quotes by Kurt Vonnegut →

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More by Kurt Vonnegut

“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we … dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything. Piece of cake.”

“Well, I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president.”

“I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That’s why we’ve got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.”

“The new heroism — put a village idiot into a pressure cooker, seal it up tight, and shoot him at the moon.”

“Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.”

Resonant Thoughts

"No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous."

— Henry Adams

Politics1838–1918

#mind

"It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring t…"

— Richard Stallman

Technology1953

#mind

"Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh."

— Emil Cioran

Philosophy1911–1995

#mind

"Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so."

— Adam Smith

Economics

#nature