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Science Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

50 Science quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

All Science quotes Kurt Vonnegut’s page

A spring morning on his way to school captures the playful curiosity that fuels scientific discovery. Vonnegut’s lines suggest that big ideas often arise from intelligent playfulness, not solemn study. He also points out that science can seem bleak compared to superstition and media hype.

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Science is magic that works.

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Any scientist who can't explain to an eight-year-old what he is doing is a charlatan.

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As a Humanist, I love science. I hate superstition, which could never have given us A-bombs.

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I was clasified as a 'Science Fiction' writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady.

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Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the human situation is just too awful.

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I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.

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Younger scientists are extremely sensitive to the moral implications of all they do.

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“science never cheered up anyone. the human situation is just too awful.”

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“They made a science out of people?" she said. "What a crazy science that must be." --"Mr. Z”

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Where you can see tribal behavior now is in this business about teaching evolution in a science class and intelligent design. It's…

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“Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan. -…

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“The trouble with the world is that people are still superstitious instead of scientific. If everybody would study science more, there wouldn't…

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I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel better, even if it's unscientific. No…

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“I think that scientific persons of the future will scoff at scientific persons of the present. They will scoff because scientific persons…

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“After the war, I went to the University of Chicago, where I was pleased to study anthropology, a science that was mostly…

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Back in my days as a chemistry student, I used to be quite a technocrat. I was firmly convinced that scientists would…

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I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled "science fiction" ... and I would like out, particularly since so…

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“In short, on the basis of horse sense and the best scientific information, there was nothing good to be said for the…

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Incidentally, I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the great science fiction writer and biochemist Dr. Isaac Asimov.…

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If I were a physics teacher or a science teacher, it'd be on my mind all the time as how the hell…

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“He alienated his friends in the sciences by thanking them extravagantly for scientific advances he had read about in the recent newspapers…

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I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some…

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I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly…

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After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb,…

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We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and…

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“It was all here for me, just as it has all been here for you, the best and the worst of Western…

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“I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to…

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“This country," said Eliot, "had tremendous research projects devoted to fighting odors. They were supported by individual contributions given to mothers who…

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“He said science was going to discover the basic secret of life some day,' the bartender put in. He scratched his head…

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“Be aware of this truth that the people on this earth could be joyous, if only they would live rationally and if…

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“Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But nobody knew any…

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“He said he hoped a lot of us would have careers in science,' she said. She didn't see anything funny in that.…

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I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better.

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All writers are going to have to learn more about science, because it's such an interesting part of their environment.

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I was a chemistry major, but I'm always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I've brought scientific thinking to…

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Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped…

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What do my science fiction stories have in common with pornography? Fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world, I'm told.

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“think that scientific persons of the future will scoff at scientific persons of the present. They will scoff because scientific persons of…

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Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea…

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“The trouble with the world was,” she continued hesitatingly, “that people were still superstitious instead of scientific. He said if everybody would…

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More by Kurt Vonnegut

“You must bloom as a writer and I must bloom as a painter. Everything else about us is uninteresting.”

“People aren't supposed to look back.”

“Have a good nap, did you?” said the porter. “Yes,” said Billy. “Man,” said the porter, “you sure had a hard-on.”

“I told him that if we doubted that we are demons in Hell, he should read The Mysterious Stranger, which Mark Twain wrote in…

“Thomas Jefferson High School [..] His high school was named after a slave owner who was also one of the world’s greatest theoreticians on…

“I had a certain amount of skill as a dramatist, and Dr. Goebbels wanted me to use it”

I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud.

“The town was Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A., Earth, Solar System, Milky Way.”

“Her face was one of a kind, a surprising variation that made observers think, Yes--that would be another very nice way for people to…

“You finally fell in love, I see,” said Salo. “Only an Earthling year ago,” said Constant. “It took us that long to realize that…

“Like all Earthlings at the point of death, Mary Young sent faint reminders of herself to those who had known her. She released a…

“And contrast Mary Kathleen, if you will, with my wife Ruth, the Ophelia of the death camps, who believed that even the most intelligent…

Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end, And our God will take things back that He to us did lend. And if,…

“They were going back to the slaughterhouse for souvenirs of the war.”

“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty…