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Kurt Vonnegut Quotes - Page 4

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

Time is liquid. One moment is no more important than any other and all moments quickly run away.

Time is liquid. One moment is no more important than any other and all moments quickly run away.

Running, Time, Important

"Bluebeard, the Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916–1988)". Book by Kurt Vonnegut, 1987.

Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.

Dog, Lying, Love You

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.

Thinking, People, Needs

Kurt Vonnegut (1998). “Timequake”, p.165, Penguin

How on earth can religious people believe in so much arbitrary, clearly invented balderdash?....The acceptance of a creed, any creed, entitles the acceptor to membership in the sort of artificial extended family we call a congregation. It is a way to fight loneliness. Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamned lonely anymore.

Lonely, Religious, Loneliness

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

I'd like to teach Iraq about Democracy because we're so experienced with it. First they should know that after 100 years they should free their slaves. Then after 150 years they should give their women the right to vote. Oh, and of course when they start it all they should begin with some genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Life, Years, Iraq

I think I succeeded as a writer because I did not come out of an English department. I used to write in the chemistry department. And I wrote some good stuff. If I had been in the English department, the prof would have looked at my short stories, congratulated me on my talent, and then showed me how Joyce or Hemingway handled the same elements of the short story. The prof would have placed me in competition with the greatest writers of all time, and that would have ended my writing career.

Writing, Thinking, Careers

Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs. So people pretend there is drama where there is none.

Movie, Drama, Book

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable.

Country, War, Taken

"Custodians of chaos" by Kurt Vonnegut, www.theguardian.com. January 20, 2006.

A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.

Insane, Sane, Persons

Kurt Vonnegut (2013). “If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young”, p.91, RosettaBooks

Words may deeply wound us, but we must run that risk to be free.

Running, Risk, May

The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged, I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors, and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural for them to despise science fiction.

Hate, War, College

A nice thing about war-not that anything about war is nice, I guess-is that while it's going on and you're in it, you never worry about doing the right thing.

War, Nice, Worry

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Player Piano”, p.206, Dial Press

Only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.

School, Nuts, Class

Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.102, Seven Stories Press

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?

School, Want, Socialism

Kurt Vonnegut (2013). “If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young”, p.50, RosettaBooks

Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.

Civilization, Ideas, Germany

Nowadays, of course, just about our only solvent industry is the merchandising of death, bankrolled by our grandchildren, so that the message of our principal art forms, movies and television and political speeches and newspaper columns, for the sake of the economy, simply has to be this: War is hell, all right, but the only way a boy can become a man is in a shoot-out of some kind, preferably, but by no means necessarily, on a battlefield.

Art, War, Mean

Kurt Vonnegut (1987). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, New York : Delacorte Press

Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.

Hurt, Mean, Animal

Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.42, Penguin

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

Children, Truth, Pride

That's the point. Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. So people getting married think they're wonderful, and that they're going to have a baby-- that's wonderful, when actually they're as ugly as rhinoceroses. Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.

Baby, Hurt, Mean

Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “Hocus Pocus”, p.41, Random House

People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.

Laughter, Hate, Thinking

Public Radio International Interview, October 2006.

Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.

Drinking, Beer, Weight Loss

"Cat's Cradle". Book by Kurt Vonnegut, 1963.

My country is in ruins. So I'm a fish in a poisoned fishbowl. I'm mostly just heartsick about this. There should have been hope. This should have been a great country. But we are despised all over the world now. I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's why I wrote books.

Country, War, Book

Source: www.penguinrandomhouse.com

There is no good reason good can't triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia.

Angel, Evil, Mafia

You are better than you think.

Thinking, Two, Three

"Welcome to the Monkey House".

Alcohol and marijuana, if used in moderation, plus loud, usually low-class music, make stress and boredom infinitely more bearable.

Weed, Stress, Marijuana

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