Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
-
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?
-
His poor soul was flooded with pleasure as he realized that one friend was all that a man needed in order to be well-supplied with friendship.
-
'You go up to a man, and you say, ‘How are things going, Joe?’ And he says, ‘Oh fine, fine-couldn’t be better.’ And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.'
-
'I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought , so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me!'
-
When I'm being funny, I try not to offend. I don't think much of what I've done has been in really ghastly taste. I don't think I have embarrassed many people or distressed them.
-
Hey - guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?
-
You are pooped and demoralized. Why wouldn't you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable.
-
All through the day I'm so confident. That's why I'm such a good salesman, you know? I have confidence, and I look like I have confidence, and that gives other people confidence.
-
I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.
-
High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.
-
Don't lecture me on race relations. I don't have a molecule of prejudice. I've been in battle with every kind of man there is. I've been in bed with every kind of woman there is - from a Laplander to a Tierra del Fuegian. If I'd ever been to the South Pole, there'd be a hell of a lot of penguins who looked like me.
-
Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.
-
Like all real heroes, Charley had a fatal flaw. He refused to believe that he had gonorrhea, whereas the truth was that he did.
-
I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife.
-
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.
-
Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn't always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.
-
America's soldiers are being treated … like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
-
All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.
-
'Why are you quitting?''Sick of my job.''Because what you were doing was morally bad?' suggested the voice.'Because it wasn’t getting anybody anywhere. Because it was getting everybody nowhere.''Because it was evil?' insisted the voice.'Because it was pointless.'
-
Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie withing every human being, looked outward-pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about.
-
There was not a country in the world that had not fought a battle in the war of all Earth against the invaders from Mars.All was forgiven.All living things were brothers, and all dead things were even more so.
-
History is merely a list of surprises. … It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.
-
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDEDFOR THE EXISTENCE OF GODWAS MUSIC
-
While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one slider said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, 'I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.' Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it.