# Quote — Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

> Teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.

- Author: [Kurt Vonnegut](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut.md)
- Book: [Breakfast of Champions](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Breakfast_of_Champions_(1973)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/teachers-of-children

## More from this book

> Like most science-fiction writers, Trout knew almost nothing about science.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/like-most-science-fiction.md)

> Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/our-awareness-is-all.md)

> Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.

p. 19 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/breakfast-of-champions/charm-was-a-scheme.md)