{
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  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/hey-guess-what",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/hey-guess-what.json",
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  "id": "b7b7ef37-c889-4d84-8add-2c64e4a841ba",
  "slug": "hey-guess-what",
  "text": "Hey — guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?",
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  "author": {
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    "title": "Breakfast of Champions",
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      "name": "humor",
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    {
      "name": "free will",
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  "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:40",
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      "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.",
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      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "consciousness",
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        {
          "name": "holiness",
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      "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,
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      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "manipulation",
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        },
        {
          "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/"
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      },
      "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.",
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      "topics": [
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        {
          "name": "colonialism",
          "slug": "colonialism",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/colonialism"
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      ],
      "source": {
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        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Breakfast_of_Champions_(1973)",
        "license": {
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}