Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
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New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.
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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?
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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.
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What is literature but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the Universe but a few molecules who have the disease called 'thought'.
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He was too good a soldier to go around asking questions, trying to round out his knowledge.A soldier’s knowledge wasn’t supposed to be round.
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I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves 'Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.'
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Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be.
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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.
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'As far as I’m concerned,' said Constant, 'the Universe is a junk yard, with everything in it overpriced. I am through poking around in the junk heaps, looking for bargains. Every so-called bargain,' said Constant, 'has been connected by fine wires to a dynamite bouquet.'
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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.
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I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.
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What is it, what can it possibly be about blowjobs and golf?
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Doctor Paul Proteus, son of a successful man, himself rich with prospects of being richer, counted his material blessings. He found that he was in excellent shape to afford integrity.
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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.
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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.
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During the Vietnam War, Abbie Hoffman announced that the new high was banana peels taken rectally. So then FBI scientists stuffed banana peels up their asses to find out if this was true or not.
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Busy, busy, busy.
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Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;Man got to tell himself he understand.
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I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.
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If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides. So it goes.
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Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?
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A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.
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I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.
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One of the great American tragedies is to have participated in a just war. It's been possible for politicians and movie-makers to encourage us we're always good guys. The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of.