{ "type": "quote", "site": { "name": "Leafy Quotes", "language": "en", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com" }, "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/a-lot-of-the", "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/a-lot-of-the.json", "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/a-lot-of-the.md", "id": "351d3b72-1315-4b10-a405-b7ed08431637", "slug": "a-lot-of-the", "text": "A lot of the people on the wrecked planet were Communists. They had a theory that what was left of the planet should be shared more or less equally among all the people, who hadn't asked to come to a wrecked planet in the first place. Meanwhile, more babies were arriving all the time—kicking and screaming, yelling for milk.\n\nIn some places people would actually try to eat mud or such on gravel while babies were being born just a few feet away.\n\nAnd so on.\n\nDwayne Hoover's and Kilgore Trout's country, where there was still plenty of everything, was opposed to Communism. It didn't think that Earthlings who had a lot should share it with others unless they really wanted to, and most of them didn't want to.\n\nSo they didn't have to.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Kurt Vonnegut", "slug": "kurt-vonnegut", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut" }, "book": { "title": "Breakfast of Champions", "slug": "breakfast-of-champions", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "America", "slug": "america", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/america" }, { "name": "poverty", "slug": "poverty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/poverty" }, { "name": "communism", "slug": "communism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/communism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Breakfast_of_Champions_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:40", "more_from_book": [ { "id": "f19677cf-aa85-4c2e-8c18-c583242c6df6", "slug": "our-awareness-is-all", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/our-awareness-is-all", "text": "Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "consciousness", "slug": "consciousness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/consciousness" }, { "name": "holiness", "slug": "holiness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/holiness" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Breakfast_of_Champions_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:40" }, { "id": "e6a6550d-0609-47e2-ab6a-8dc986629db3", "slug": "charm-was-a-scheme", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/charm-was-a-scheme", "text": "Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 19, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "manipulation", "slug": "manipulation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/manipulation" }, { "name": "seduction", "slug": "seduction", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/seduction" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Breakfast_of_Champions_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:40" }, { "id": "c760ae8c-c569-48cd-a869-2d5a9ff1c433", "slug": "here-is-how", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/here-is-how", "text": "Here is how the pirates were able to take whatever they wanted from anybody else: they had the best boats in the world, and they were meaner than anybody else, and they had gunpowder, which was a mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulphur. They touched this seemingly listless powder with fire, and it turned violently into gas. This gas blew projectiles out of metal tubes at terrific velocities. The projectiles cut through meat and bone very easily; so the pirates could wreck the wiring or the bellows or the plumbing of a stubborn human being, even when he was far, far away.\n\nThe chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "greed", "slug": "greed", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/greed" }, { "name": "colonialism", "slug": "colonialism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/colonialism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Breakfast_of_Champions_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:40" } ] }