Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

He couldn't tell the difference between one politician and another. They were all formlessly enthusiastic chimpanzees to him.

I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for
to find out how much a man could take without breaking.

Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines.

She went on to avow that she was tired of just pretending to meet people.

I was making my mind as blank as possible, you see, since the past was so embarrassing and the future so terrifying.

If he had been a dog in a city, a policeman would have shot him and sent his head to a laboratory, to see if he had rabies. So it goes.

Men want a lot of pals - and they don't want people to get mad at them.

We are never as modern, as far ahead of the past as we like to think we are.

Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?

Did you or did you not say that the United States was a crock of doo-doo?

You boys ain't got it so bad," he said to his rigid squadmates. "You oughta see how we treat the generals, if you think you's bad off.

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

I had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth

If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I've said. Farewell, hello, farewell, hello.

Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are.

( ... ) a Universe composed of one-trillionth part matter to one decillion parts black velvet futility.

I love you, because the love you gave me was the only love I've ever had, the only love I ever will have

Nature had obviously color-coded people for a reason. Otherwise, what the hell were all these different colors for?

Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power.

There is no way a beautiful woman can live up to what she looks like for any appreciable length of time.

Cigarettes are a classy way to commit suiside.

It's the writer's job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all.

Oh, sure, we have another world war coming, and another great depression, but where are the leaders this time?

The third bullet was for the filthy flamingo, who stopped dead center in the road when the

It was a thunderingly beautiful experience-voluptuous, sexual, dangerous, and expensive as hell.

Quoth the doorbell with its silence, no comment at this time.

As the new Adam, it might be said, his final act was to cast the Apple of Knowledge into the deep blue sea.

And on and on it went-that duet between the dumb, praying lady and the big, hollow man who was so full of loving echoes.

Life is a garden, not a road. We enter and exit through the same gate. Wandering, where we go matters less than what we notice.

You will last a lot longer, if you don't try to sing.

The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.

Then again, I am a monopolar depressive descended from monopolar depressives. That's how come I write so good.

Just in the nick of time they realized that it was their own habitat they were wrecking
that they weren't merely visitors.

The mosaicist was making the fine hairs on the nape of Mona's swan neck out of chips of gold

The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.

Poverty is a relatively mild disease for even a very flimsy American soul, but uselessness will kill strong and weak souls alike, and kill every time.

Thinking brainlessly with their spinal cords.

It was literature in its finest sense, since it made Unk courageous, watchful, and secretly free.

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Life goes on- and a fool and his self respect are soon parted ...

Lincoln was shot by a two-bit actor who was exercising his right to bear arms.

I'd give my right arm to be enthusiastic.

Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns.

He hadn't killed nearly as many people as I had. But then again, he hadn't had my advantage, which was the full cooperation of our Government.

Marguerite Young is unquestionably a genius.

The Earthlings behaved at all times as though there were a big eye in the sky - as though that big eye were ravenous for entertainment.

I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with

Science never cheered up anyone. the human situation is just too awful.

They like life alright, but that they would like it even better if they could know that it was going to end sometime.

Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be, to protect yourself.

The name of the new religion," said Rumfoord, "is The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

I'm mad about being old and I'm mad about being American. Apart from that, OK.

Why should I bother with made-up games when there are so many real ones going on?

There is no peace, I'm sorry to say. We find it. We lose it. We find it again. We lose it again.

Things are going to get unimaginably worse, and they are never, ever, going to get better.

His response was to fight it with the only weapons at hand - passive resistance and open displays of contempt.

Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass.

You develop a style from writing a lot.

If you can't write clearly, you probably don't think nearly as well as you think you do.

Popular as he was as a graduation speaker, Vonnegut never graduated from college.

I've been living alone for so long, everything about me's private. I'm surprised anyone's able to understand a word I say.

I didn't need a timequake to teach me being alive was a crock of shit. i already knew that from my childhood and crucifixes and history books.

My God, what have they done to you? This isn't a man, it's a broken kite.

I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer."
"What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?

He tried. That's the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.

He ate a pear. It was a hard one. It fought back against his grinding teeth. It snapped in juicy protest.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

"Papa" referred to Frank five times as: " ... the blood son of Dr. Felix Hoenikker."
The phrase reeked of cannibalism.

If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable.

He remembered his cry of the night before: We must meet in the middle of the Bridge!

To me it's as though you called me up out of the blue on a day like any other day, and asked me if I was grown up yet.

Everything is going to be unimaginably worse and is never going to get any better.

I think I am trying to make my head as empty as it was when I was born onto this damaged planet fifty years ago.

My mother scared herself with her own queerness, and from that moment on I ceased to be her companion.

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

A lot of people were opposed to it. A lot of people were for it. I myself think about it as little as possible.

The highest possible form of treason is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do.

It had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth. The

I'm convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

The fat woman's expression implied that she would go crazy on the spot if anybody did any more thinking.

So let's give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That'll teach bin Laden a lesson he won't soon forget.

Literature is the only art in which the audience performs the score.

To be is to do - Socrates To do is to be - Sartre Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra

Get plenty of education. Lead you class in all things. Keep your body clean and strong. Keep your opinions to yourself.

A chaplain's assistant is customarily a figure of fun in the American Army.

And somebody might now want to ask me, "Can't you ever be serious?" The answer is, "No.

Round and round we spin, with feet of lead and wings of tin.

The honeymoon was taking place in the bittersweet mysteries of Indian Summer in New England.

People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.

He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

The coaches stunk of coal smoke and rationed tobacco and rationed booze and the farts of people eating wartime food.

A twerp was defined as a guy who put his set of false teeth up his rear end and bit the buttons off the backseats of taxicabs.

Q: What is wrong with the world?
A: Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to things themselves.

Another woman told Constant what it was the crowd felt it had a right to. 'We have a right to know what's going on!' she cried.

I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch. We'll see.

That's what is was to be young - to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.

There's only one rule that I know of, babies - "God damn it babies, you've go to be kind".