“In order to get what we've got, Anita, we have, in effect, traded these people out of what was the most important thing on earth to them — the feeling of being needed and useful, the foundation of self-respect.”

—  Kurt Vonnegut, book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 18 (p. 169)

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Kurt Vonnegut318
American writer 1922–2007

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