Marissa Uden > Marissa's Quotes

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.”
― Carl Sandburg

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Science is magic that works.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Until you die .. it's all life.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps right on doing bad, dumb things.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I've often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they're on, why they don't fall off it, how much time they've probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on. I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth. But I got stuck on explaining why we don't fall off the planet. Gravity is just a word. It doesn't explain anything. If I could get past gravity, I'd tell them how we reproduce, how long we've been here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution. I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.”
― kurt vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“Everything about life is a joke. Don't you know that?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

“She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

“People say there are no atheists in foxholes. A lot of people think this is a good argument against atheism. Personally, I think it's a much better argument against foxholes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“The function of the artist is to make people like life better than they have before.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“His response was to fight it with the only weapons at hand—passive resistance and open displays of contempt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies. Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right away.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!

“In the 18th century, a revolution in thought, known as the Enlightenment, dragged us away from the superstition and brutality of the Middle Ages toward a modern age of science, reason and democracy. It changed everything. If it wasn't for the Enlightenment, you wouldn't be reading this right now. You'd be standing in a smock throwing turnips at a witch. Yes, the Enlightenment was one of the most significant developments since the wheel. Which is why we're trying to bollocks it all up.

Welcome to a dangerous new era - the Unlightenment - in which centuries of rational thought are overturned by idiots. Superstitious idiots. They're everywhere - reading horoscopes, buying homeopathic remedies, consulting psychics, babbling about "chakras" and "healing energies", praying to imaginary gods, and rejecting science in favour of soft-headed bunkum. But instead of slapping these people round the face till they behave like adults, we encourage them. We've got to respect their beliefs, apparently.”
― Charlie Brooker

“A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
― Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

“To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?”
― Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

“My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being.”
― David Foster Wallace

“Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene