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Kurt Vonnegut Quotes - Page 14

All Quotes Accidents Age Alcohol Apologizing Army Art Atheism Atheist Belief Bitterness Business Chaos Character Chemistry Children Christ Church College Communication Community Compassion Competition Country Creativity Culture Curiosity Dancing Democracy Design Dignity Doubt Dying Earth Evil Evolution Expectations Feelings Fighting Food Forgiveness Frustration Fun Funny Giving God Happiness Hard Work Hate Heart Heaven Hell Hiroshima Home Humanity Hurt Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Jazz Jesus Laughter Life Literature Loneliness Love Luck Lying Making Love Management Maturity Meaning Of Life Military Mountain Music Nature Opportunity Pain Past Philosophy Politics Progress Purpose Reading Reality Religion Revenge Running Safety School Science Science Fiction Shame Sleep Smoking Socialism Son Soul Students Stupidity Style Survival Teaching Technology Time Today Trade Tragedy Train Universe Waiting Wall War Water Wife Work Writing

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.

Sweet, Atheist, Crazy

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Mother Night: A Novel”, p.160, Dial Press

The moral of the story is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around.

Moving, Animal, People

Interview with David Brancaccio, "NOW" on PBS, www.pbs.org. October 07, 2005.

Indianapolis, Indiana is the first place in the United States of America where a white man was hanged for the murder of an Indian. The kind of people who'll hang a white man for murdering an Indian--that's the kind of people for me.

Men, White Man, America

Kurt Vonnegut (2007). “The Sirens of Titan”, p.321, Dial Press

...we took the 10 machines we agreed were the most beguiling, and we put them on permanent exhibit in the foyer of this library underneath a sign whose words can surely be applied to this whole ruined planet nowadays: THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE

Ignorance, Library, Foyers

Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.19, Penguin

That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.

Mistake, Thinking, Alive

Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Deadeye Dick”, Delacorte Press

The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000. I suppose they will all want dignity, I said.

Years, Slaughterhouse Five, Population

KURT VONNEGUT, JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE”

Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

Science, Space, Progress

The Sirens of Titan epigraph (1959)

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

Fear, Hate, Hard Work

"Cat's Cradle". Book by Kurt Vonnegut (Chapter 124), 1963.

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

Order, World, Requirements

Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.155, Univ. Press of Mississippi

What antidote can there be for an idea that popular and poisonous? Revenge provides revenge, which is sure to provide revenge, forming an endless chain of human misery. Here's the antidote: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Amen.

Forgiveness, Revenge, Ideas

He couldn't tell the difference between one politician and another. They were all formlessly enthusiastic chimpanzees to him.

Differences, Politician, Chimpanzees

Fathers are always so proud the first time they see their sons in uniform," she said. "I know Big John Karpinski was," I said. He is my neighbor to the north, of course. Big John's son Little John did badly in high school, and the police caught him selling dope. So he joined the Army while the Vietnam War was going on. And the first time he came home in uniform, I never saw Big John so happy, because it looked to him as though Little John was all straightened out and would amount to something. But then Little John came home in a body bag.

Father, War, Home

Kurt Vonnegut (1998). “Bluebeard”, Dial Press

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

Memorable, Television, Modern

Kurt Vonnegut (2013). “If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young”, p.52, RosettaBooks

Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are.

Maturity, Knowing, Way

There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

War, Character, People

KURT VONNEGUT JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE”

It seems to me that the most universal revolutionary wish now or ever is a wish for heaven, a wish by a human being to be honored by angels for something other than beauty or usefulness.

Angel, Heaven, Wish

Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

If facts weren't funny, or scary, or couldn't make you rich, the heck with them.

Scary, Hocus Pocus, Facts

Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.52, Penguin

Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.

Flower, Book, Government

KURT VONNEGUT, JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE”

The prostitutes worked for a pimp now. He was splendid and cruel. He was a god to them. He took their free will away from them, which was perfectly all right. They didn't want it anyway. It was as though they had surrendered themselves to Jesus, for instance, so they could live unselfishly and trustingly-except that they had surrendered to a pimp instead.

Jesus, Stupidity, Pimp

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Breakfast of Champions: Or, Goodbye Blue Monday!”, CNIB, 197

When the last living thing Has died on account of us, How poetical it would be If Earth could say, In a voice floating up Perhaps From the floor Of the Grand Canyon, "It is done." People did not like it here.

Voice, People, Would Be

Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.137, Seven Stories Press

Question: What is the white stuff in bird poop? Answer: That is bird poop, too.

White, Bird, Poop

Kurt Vonnegut (1998). “Timequake”, p.127, Penguin

That speciﬁc remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues.

Epidemics, Remedy

Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.67, Seven Stories Press

You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.

Baby, Children, War

Slaughterhouse-Five ch. 5 (1969)

If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.

Jesus, Want, Messages

Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian”, p.8, Seven Stories Press

Don't you think that's the main reason people find [writing] so difficult? If they can write complete sentences and can use a dictionary, isn't that the only reason they find writing hard: they don't know or care about anything?

Writing, Thinking, People

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.27, Dial Press

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