Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
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The new heroism - put a village idiot into a pressure cooker, seal it up tight, and shoot him at the moon.
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About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.
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You know, the truth can be really powerful stuff. You're not expecting it.
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I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
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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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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.
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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.
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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 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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Busy, busy, busy.
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It is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln. He always steals the show.
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I don't think there would be many jokes, if there weren't constant frustration and fear and so forth. It's a response to bad troubles like crime.
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If you appear in the 'Atlantic' or 'Harper's' or the 'New Yorker,' by God, you must be a writer, because everybody says so.
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What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
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Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.
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I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.
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What is it, what can it possibly be about blowjobs and golf?
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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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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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It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead.
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'All people are insane,' he said. 'They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.'
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I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine.
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A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.
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Science is magic that works.