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Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?


Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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The ancient Greeks were the first ones to say an unexamined life is not worth living. They don't...
COLIN QUINN The unexamined life is not worth living, but the unlived life is not worth examining.
TRACY THOMPSON The unexamined life is not worth living.
SOCRATES An unexamined life is not worth living.
SOCRATES Look - I understand that an unexamined life is not worth living, but do you think I could someday ha...
ELIZABETH GILBERT If the unexamined life is not worth living, the unexamined past is not worth possessing; it bears fr...
BRENDAN GILL Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM As Richard Pryor was to Eddie Murphy, that's what Kurt Vonnegut was to me.
CHRISTOPHER MOORE A walk?" said Catharine.
"One foot in front of the other," said Newt, "through leaves, over bri...
KURT VONNEGUT JR. Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but...
KURT VONNEGUT Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be. -Kurt Vonnegut.
KURT VONNEGUT [...] as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out [...] the literary novel has become extraordinarily privatistic o...
JAMES K. MORROW The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is...
WALTER BENJAMIN In seventh grade, with some vague sense that I wanted to be a writer, I crouched in the junior high ...
JESS WALTER 148She once said, "Just because you have talent doesn't mean you have to you have to do something wi...
NANETTE VONNEGUT The unexamined faith is not worth having.
ELTON TRUEBLOOD Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, l...
HENRI POINCARE If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, l...
HENRI POINCARE Will-power to live a life well worth living of many life-styles only to create a style of your own i...
JEFFREY LEE GIBSON JR. Be not afraid of life believe that life is worth living and your belief will create the fact.
HENRY JAMES A life lived unexplored is a life not worth living.
KIRK HAMMETT It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, a...
STEPHEN FRY If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.
SENECA Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
HENRY JAMES Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
WILLIAM JAMES Be not afraid of life. Believe that life IS worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS So long as we do not blow our brains out, we have decided life is worth living.
PHILIPUS AUREOLUS PARACELSUS So long as we do not blow our brains out, we have decided life is worth living.
PHILIPUS AUREOLUS Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right...
JOSEPH FINK Some people never take a chance and never know what it's like to live life to the full.
CHLOE THURLOW The commandment is that you shall love, but when you understand life and yourself, then it is as if ...
SOREN KIERKEGAARD Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as we...
MILAN KUNDERA Are we living a life that is safe from harm?

Of course not. We never are. But that’s no...
JOSEPH FINK She was restless. She drove a little too fast, swam a little too far offshore. She hitchhiked. She s...
ELIZABETH WINDER Carefully execute every instruction given to you by the director, producer, and studio. But that wou...
CARTER BURWELL Creativity is not just thinking outside the box but living outside it.
VICTOR SHAMAS Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Life can only be understood looking backward. It must be lived forward.
ERIC ROTH Life is not worth living if I cannot have pasta or bread again.
MONICA SELES And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?
MILAN KUNDERA Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it?...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY A life without sweets is not much worth living.
PAWAN MISHRA I used to feel that if I say something's wrong, I have to say how it could be made right. But wh...
ETGAR KERET Life without risk is not worth living.
CHUCK LINDBERGH If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS Kurt Vonnegut said, 'The best of Bob and Ray is virtually indistinguishable from the worst.'...
BOB ELLIOTT Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.
L.M. MONTGOMERY There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturall...
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE Every time we sin, it causes chaos in our lives; maybe not at that very moment, but eventually it al...
ROBIN BERTRAM As an adolescent, Vonnegut made my life bearable.
JON STEWART A Life without criticism and status is not a worth living.
SOCRATES Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.
MARK TWAIN A dead heart is a dead life; keep your heart alive; let your heart beat for something unique!
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH What makes life worth living is knowing that one day you'll wake up and find the person that makes y...
MAYA ANGELOU Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living.
MARK TWAIN These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and yo...
WILLIAM JAMES These, then are my last words to you: be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and ...
WILLIAM JAMES A born poet knows in his cradle that a poetic life is the only life worth living.
JAMES BROUGHTON Having a dream is what keeps you alive. Overcoming the challenges make life worth living.
MARY TYLER MOORE Having a dream is what keeps you alive, ... Overcoming the challenges make life worth living.
MARY TYLER MOORE " Your life is only worth; what you think its worth living for? What do you think?" Dawayne A White
DAWAYNE A WHITE Imagine choosing a job not on money or even on career advancement, but as part of a life worth livin...
DALE DAUTEN There is more to life than you know
SOTONYE ANGA LIfe? LIfe? It's Death that makes life worth living for.
AARON HOWARD ...Life is what you make of it, there is no such thing as a "Common" most important thing in life, b...
J C A ROWE No matter what Aristotle and the Philosophers say, nothing is equal to tobacco; it's the passion...
MOLIERE Obscurity and competence - that is the life that is best worth living
MARK TWAIN The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.
BRUCE LEE Come to think of it I don't know that love has a point, which is what makes it so glorious. Sex has ...
STEPHEN FRY - Mrzim sve što je odricanje!
- Ni ja, Ivane, ne pristajem da se odričem. Ja hoću ceo, sav, ...
DOBRICA ĆOSIć Fuel your life with passion.
TERESA COLLINS Outside your comfort zone is the only place worth living.
KARINA BLISS It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That's not life. Somehow our Americ...
TOM BRADY Discrimination due to age is one of the great tragedies of modern life. The desire to work and be us...
JOHNNY BALL To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no lon...
GASTON BACHELARD I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relations...
C. JOYBELL C. Life isn't worth living if I miss an episode
ANTHONY HOPKINS You will miss a normal life while living a successful life, but not as much as the craving for a suc...
AMIT KALANTRI I think the best thing for you to do is just live your life. Live a life that's worth living, on...
DAN SAVAGE Life isn't worth living if you're scared all the time.
-Jordan
SARA SHEPARD Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
SAMUEL BUTLER Scum of the Earth as some may be in their daily lives, they can all be saints in emergencies.
KURT VONNEGUT Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of phil...
ALBERT CAMUS We know that without food we would die. Without fellowship, life is not worth living.
LAURIE COLWIN I read a lot of short fiction, like Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver and Wells Tower.
LORDE You've got to learn something each day of your life, life is not easy but taking the easy way out do...
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. He is intricately involved in our lives and for that...
ROBIN BERTRAM If money is all that a man makes, then he will be poor. Poor in happiness and poor in all that makes...
HERBERT N. CASSON If money is all that a man makes, then he will be poor. Poor in happiness and poor in all that makes...
ROBERT N. C. NIX Make it a point whilst you live that long after you are gone, your works must live, teach, inspire a...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emo...
ALICE WALKER Anything that is exclusive will be accused of elitism; living one’s dreams will be called pretenti...
FENNEL HUDSON The uncommitted life isn't worth living.
MARSHALL FISHWICK If life is a bowl of cherries, what's inside of it?
JOSH STERN A new day is here! yesterday is gone! tomorrow is preparing to come! but why is today here?
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Only a life lived for others is worth living
ALBERT EINSTEIN What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than ...
MARK VONNEGUT

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I find the prospect nauseating....
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'Each person does a little something,' I said, 'and there...
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It blotted out the sun.
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Oh, God — what a world they try to lead them in.
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KURT VONNEGUT JR. There is nothing left of him but curiosity and a pair of eyes.
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That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossi...
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...
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KURT VONNEGUT JR. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
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KURT VONNEGUT, JR. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion . . . . I myself prefer to laugh...
KURT VONNEGUT, JR. .The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms
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KURT VONNEGUT JR. I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.
KURT VONNEGUT JR. The only difference between KURT VONNEGUT JR. We are impossibly conceited animals, and actually dumb as heck. Ask any teacher. You don't even have...
KURT VONNEGUT JR. Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt
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KURT VONNEGUT, JR. Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
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KURT VONNEGUT JR. So it goes.
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KURT VONNEGUT JR. We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
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human relations now. The...
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KURT VONNEGUT If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely y...
KURT VONNEGUT There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.
KURT VONNEGUT I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
KURT VONNEGUT I let the dog out, or I let him in, and we talk some. I let him know I like him, and he lets me know...
KURT VONNEGUT If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
KURT VONNEGUT I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
KURT VONNEGUT Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudic...
KURT VONNEGUT What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thin...
KURT VONNEGUT Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn't always so ...
KURT VONNEGUT People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll h...
KURT VONNEGUT If somebody says, I love you, to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can an...
KURT VONNEGUT I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day. Nine to twelve in the morning, five to six in the evenin...
KURT VONNEGUT Thinking doesn't seem to help very much. The human brain is too high-powered to have many practical ...
KURT VONNEGUT What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and c...
KURT VONNEGUT The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowled...
KURT VONNEGUT Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak, and boy, we've got a lot more beef steak than any othe...
KURT VONNEGUT ... this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so inc...
KURT VONNEGUT The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much wi...
KURT VONNEGUT We are all what we pretend to be, but, we had better be very careful what we pretend.
KURT VONNEGUT I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a ver...
KURT VONNEGUT I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds o...
KURT VONNEGUT We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
KURT VONNEGUT Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than befo...
KURT VONNEGUT People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have...
KURT VONNEGUT There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos inste...
KURT VONNEGUT There's only one me, and I'm stuck with him.
KURT VONNEGUT I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled Science Fiction and I would like out, par...
KURT VONNEGUT Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
KURT VONNEGUT Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us hu...
KURT VONNEGUT There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to have without reser...
KURT VONNEGUT Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but...
KURT VONNEGUT It was a thunderingly beautiful experience -- voluptuous, sexual, dangerous, and expensive as hell.
KURT VONNEGUT We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrol...
KURT VONNEGUT Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.
KURT VONNEGUT Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this messag...
KURT VONNEGUT Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to rem...
KURT VONNEGUT I have no degree in biochemistry, neither do I have one in mechanical engineering, as the Army saw f...
KURT VONNEGUT True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the countr...
KURT VONNEGUT What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American f...
KURT VONNEGUT Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since...
KURT VONNEGUT