Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
-
We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. I used to think that science would save us, and science certainly tried. But we can't stand any more tremendous explosions, either for or against democracy.
-
During the war, in hundreds of Iliums over America, managers and engineers learned to get along without their men and women, who went to fight. It was the miracle that won the war - production with almost no manpower. In the patois of the north side of the river, it was the know-how that won the war. Democracy owed its life to know-how.
-
I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.
-
All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.
-
'We're having a celebration, so all sorts of things have been said which are not true,' I said. 'That's how to act at a party.'
-
It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead.
-
Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible.
-
Wars would be a lot better, I think, if guys would say to themselves sometimes 'Jesus - I'm not going to do that to the enemy. That's too much.'
-
The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.
-
The controls were anything but a hunch-player’s delight in a Universe composed of one-trillionth part matter to one decillion parts black velvet futility.
-
During most of my freelancing, I made what I would have made in charge of the cafeteria at a pretty good junior-high school.
-
These displaced people need something, and the clergy can’t give it to them-or it’s impossible for them to take what the clergy offers. The clergy says it’s enough, and so does the Bible. The people say it isn’t enough, and I suspect they’re right.
-
'All people are insane,' he said. 'They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.'
-
As a Humanist, I love science. I hate superstition, which could never have given us A-bombs.
-
And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.
-
If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.
-
I have become an enthusiast for the printed word again. I have to be that, I now understand, because I want to be a character in all of my works. I can do that in print. In a movie, somehow, the author always vanishes. Everything of mine which has been filmed so far has been one character short, and that character is me.
-
This country is being managed to death, being public related to death.
-
Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.
-
'I tell you, Mr. Constant,' he said genially, 'it’s a thankless job, telling people it’s a hard, hard Universe they’re in.'
-
The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.
-
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.
-
I can have oodles of charm when I want to.
-
Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.