Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
-
Ta ta and adios. Or, as Saint Peter said to me with a sly wink, when I told him I was on my last-round trip to Paradise: 'See you later, Alligator.'
-
Labor history was pornography of a sort in those days, and even more so in these days. In public schools and in the homes of nice people it was and remains pretty much taboo to tell tales of labor's sufferings and derring-do.
-
America's soldiers are being treated … like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
-
Hey - guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?
-
One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.
-
The lieutenant-colonel realized for the first time what most people never realize about themselves-that he was not only a victim of outrageous fortune, but one of outrageous fortune’s cruelest agents as well.
-
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.
-
High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.
-
Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.
-
I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day. Nine to twelve in the morning, five to six in the evening. Businessmen would achieve better results if they studied human metabolism. No one works well eight hours a day. No one ought to work more than four hours.
-
When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.
-
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.
-
Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.
-
What do I myself think of this particular book? I feel lousy about it, but I always feel lousy about my books.
-
'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.'
-
'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!'
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,Why go right ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.