Quote by Kurt Vonnegut

And Castle nodded sagely. 'So this is a picture of the meaninglessness of it all! I couldn't agree more.''Do you agree?' I asked. 'A minute ago you said something about Jesus.''Who?' said Castle.'Jesus Christ?''Oh,' said Castle. '.' He shrugged. 'People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.''I see.' I knew I wasn't going to have an easy time writing a popular article about him. I was going to have to concentrate on his saintly deeds and ignore entirely the satanic things he thought and said.


And Castle nodded sagely. 'So this is a picture of the meani

Summary

The quote reflects a conversation between two individuals, where Castle dismisses the significance of talking about meaningful topics. He suggests that people engage in mundane conversations to keep their voice boxes functioning, preserving their ability to express themselves when something truly meaningful occurs. The speaker realizes that it will be challenging to portray Castle positively in an article due to his contrasting views and has to focus on his positive actions while ignoring his unconventional thoughts. This quote explores the concept of finding meaning in conversation and the challenges in presenting someone with contrasting beliefs.

By Kurt Vonnegut
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Random Quotations

Having learnt from experiment and argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this, and always expects the law he has learnt to be fulfilled.But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws, he does not and cannot believe it.However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the same conditions and with the same character he will do the same thing as before, yet when, under the same conditions and with the same character, he approaches for the thousandth time the action that always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot imagine life. He feels that, however impossible it may be, it is so, for without this conceptions of freedom not only would he be unable to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single moment.He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom.A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life.If the conception of freedom appears to reason a senseless contradiction, like the possibility of performing two actions at one and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.

Leo Tolstoy