Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
-
Like most science-fiction writers, Trout knew almost nothing about science.
-
If God were alive today, he would have to be an atheist, because the excrement has hit the air-conditioning big time, big time.
-
This theory argues that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are supersensitive. They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.
-
I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
-
It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.
-
The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.
-
This silly playlet seemed to satisfy them completely as a picture of what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who was against them, and why some people were against them. It was a beautifully simple picture these procession leaders had. It was as though a navigator, in order to free his mind of worries, had erased all the reefs from his maps.
-
He held up his watch to sunlight, letting it drink in the wherewithal that was to solar watches what money was to Earth men.
-
New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.
-
'During my next visit with you, fellow-believers,' he said, 'I shall tell you a parable about people who do things that they think God Almighty wants done. In the meanwhile, you would do well, for background on this parable, to read everything that you can lay your hands on about the Spanish Inquisition.'
-
It may surprise you to learn that I take a certain pride, no matter how foolishly mistaken that pride may be, in making my own decisions for my own reasons.
-
There is a riddle about a man who is locked in a room with nothing but a bed and a calendar, and the question is: How does he survive?The answer is: He eats dates from the calendar and drinks water from the springs of the bed.
-
You were sick, but now you're well, and there's work to do.
-
Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.
-
Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.
-
Maybe God has let everybody who ever lived be reborn - so he or she can see how it ends. Even Pitecanthropus erectus and Australopithecus and Sinanthropus pekensis and the Neanderthalers are back on Earth - to see how it ends. They're all on Times Square - making change for peepshows. Or recruiting Marines.
-
The new heroism - put a village idiot into a pressure cooker, seal it up tight, and shoot him at the moon.
-
If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.
-
He alienated his friends in the sciences by thanking them extravagantly for scientific advances he had read about in the recent newspapers and magazines, by assuring them, with a perfectly straight face, that life was getting better and better, thanks to scientific thinking.
-
To bethe eyesand earsand conscienceof the Creator of the Universe,you fool.
-
Is it possible that seemingly incredible geniuses like Bach and Shakespeare and Einstein were not in fact superhuman, but simply plagiarists, copying great stuff from the future?
-
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish that people wouldn’t get so mad at them.
-
People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.
-
I'm screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I'm funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that's appreciated by young people.