A Quote by Kurt Vonnegut

A lack of seriousness has led to all sorts of wonderful insights.

Kurt Vonnegut

Quote Topics

Insights Lack Led Seriousness Wonderful

Quote Author

Kurt Vonnegut
American - Writer
November 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007

Baseball has traditionally possessed a wonderful lack of seriousness. The game's best player, Babe Ruth, was a Rabelaisian fat man, and its most loved manager, Casey Stengel, spoke gibberish. In this lazy sport, only the pitcher pours sweat. Then he takes three days off.

Thomas Boswell

In using the terms play and playfulness, I do not intend to suggest any lack of seriousness; quite the contrary. Anyone who has watched children, or adults, at play will recognize that there is no contradiction between play and seriousness, and that some forms of play induce a measure of grave concentration not so readily called forth by work.

Richard Hofstadter

Lack of comfort means we are on the threshold of new insights.

Lawrence M. Krauss

The lack of judicial accountability exemplified by the lack of a system of selecting judges and of dealing with complaints against them, has indeed led to the system gradually losing its integrity.

Prashant Bhushan

There was a time when the conservative movement was led by the likes of Bill Buckley and Irving Kristol and Bob Bartley, men of ideas who invested the Republican Party with intellectual seriousness.

Bret Stephens

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too.

Luther Standing Bear

I think there's an appetite for seriousness. Seriousness is voluptuous, and very few people have allowed themselves the luxury of it.

Leonard Cohen

Seriousness is the refuge of the shallow. There are events and personal experiences that call forth seriousness but they are fewer than most of us think.

Rita Mae Brown

I think quite a misguided literary culture has grown up in the 20th century that says a book has to have a seriousness of purpose and a seriousness of language.

Nick Hornby

My insights come in periods of working. There are wonderful moments of surprise, but I'm superstitious enough not to want to talk about them.

Richard Diebenkorn

I can play in many sorts of categories because we've seen that with Led Zeppelin, all the acoustic stuff, and this, that and the other.

Jimmy Page

Keynes was a very good economist. He was brilliant. He had wonderful insights. His work has inspired me many times.

Thomas J. Sargent

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

Octavia Butler

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

Kurt Vonnegut

I hope I pass on my dad's good humor, work ethic and lack of self-seriousness. Our house was always a fun place where you'd get knocked around quickly if you took yourself too seriously.