Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes & Sayings

I thought the worst of everyone. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

This is Kurt Vonnegut in the effing state-of-the-art lethal injection facility in Huntsville, effing, Texas signing off. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Weary drew back his right boot, aimed a kick at the spine, at the tube which had so many of Billy's important wires in it. Weary was going to break that tube. But — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody's whim of killing Father or Fats or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that being alive is a crock of shit. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Here's all she had to say about death: "Oh my, oh my. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

No trouble. There really isn't a heck of a lot to the job. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Skyscraper National Park — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I somersaulted lazily and pleasantly through the void, — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The pride in strength and important mystery showed no less in the eyes of the sweepers than in those of the machinists and inspectors, and in those of the foreman, who alone was without a lunchbox. A — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

If a man has but one child," said the Senator, "and the family is famous for producing unusual, strong-willed individuals, what standards can the man have for deciding whether or not his child is a nut? — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

And what we will all be seeking when we decamp, and for the rest of our lives, will be large, stable communities of like-minded people, which is to say relatives. They no longer exist. The lack of them is not only the main cause, but probably the only cause of our shapeless discontent in the midst of such prosperity. We thought we could do without tribes and clans. Well, we can't. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The men wore loose loincloths that did little to conceal penes like pendulums on grandfather clocks. There — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The major point at which his reason and his sense of humor left him was when he approached the question of what people were really supposed to do with their time on Earth. He — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Hardly anyone in the world is an American — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Well done, Mr. Krebbs, well done. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Early supper" meant early drinking too. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

To me, wanting every habitable planet to be inhabited is like wanting everybody to have athlete's foot. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

the village would never accept it. It has a policy of never accepting anything. As a happy consequence, it changes about as fast as the rules of chess. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It was be a hermit or open a hotel-. -with nothing in between. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

...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 — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I agree that all religions, including Bokononism, are nothing but lies. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

You can learn all kinds of habits quickly under martial law. The — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Fern showed him an organizational plan that had the name Magnum Opus, Incorporated. It was a marvelous engine for doing violence to the spirit of thousands of laws without actually running afoul of so much as a city ordinance. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

They were grainy things, soot and chalk. They could have been anybody. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I'm not a soldier, not a political man. I'm an artist. If war comes, I won't do anything to help it along. If war comes, it'll find me still working at my peaceful trade. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Did you ever talk to Dr. Hoenikker?" I asked Miss Faust.
"Oh, certainly. I talked to him a lot."
"Do any conversations stick in your mind?"
"There was one where he bet I couldn't tell him anything that was absolutely true. So I said to him, 'God is love.'"
"And what did he say?"
"He said, 'What is God? What is love? — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Americans have finally heard about Dresden," said Rumfoord, twenty-three years after the raid. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It takes a heap of living to make a house a home — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Western Civilization rests on great men, and nothing else. And we are no longer producing great men. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

If I'd had a bazooka, I could have blown a hole in the wall between us. If I hadn't killed one or both of us, I could have asked you, 'What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like that?' — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

made Weary sick to be ditched. When Weary was ditched, he would find somebody who was even more unpopular than himself, and he would horse around with that person for a while, pretending to be friendly. And then he would find some pretext for beating the shit out of him. It — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The twelve sides were said by the architect to represent the twelve great religions of the world. So far, no one had asked the architect to name them. That was lucky, because he couldn't have done it. There — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

She quieted, and turned away under his stare. Inadvertently, he'd gained the upper hand. He had somehow communicated the thought that had bobbed up in his thoughts unexpectedly: that her strength and poise were no more than a mirror image of his own importance, an image of the power and self-satisfaction the manager of the Ilium Works could have, if he wanted it. In a fleeting second she became a helpless, bluffing little girl in his thoughts, and he was able to feel real tenderness toward her. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Galapagos': Vonnegut Explores Big-Brain Theory
October 23, 1985, Elizabeth Mehren

The big trouble, in Kurt Vonnegut's view, is our big brains.

'Our brains are much too large,' Vonnegut said. 'We are much too busy. Our brains have proved to be terribly destructive.'

Big brains, Vonnegut said, invent nuclear weapons. Big brains terrify the planet into worrying about when those weapons will be used. Big brains are restless. Big brains demand constant amusement. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

One of the first things I discovered when I became an agent was that I couldn't afford an imagination any more — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

No," said Trout, "for delighting Jesus Christ by shooting dead a doctor coming to work in an
abortion mill. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Eliot had only one pair of shoes, black ones. They had a crackle finish as a result of an experiment. Eliot once tried to polish them with Johnson's Glo-Coat, which was a floorwax, not intended for shoes. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Billy Pilgrim tried hard to care. A — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Whatever we've said, friends, we're saying still-- such as it was, such as it is, such as it will be — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

When the United States of America, which was meant to be a Utopia for all, was less than a century old, Noah Rosewater and a few men like him demonstrated the folly of the Founding Fathers in one respect: those sadly recent ancestors had not made it the law of the Utopia that the wealth of each citizen should be limited. This oversight was engendered by a weak-kneed sympathy for those who loved expensive things, and by the feeling that the continent was so vast and valuable, and the population so thin and enterprising, that no thief, no matter how fast he stole, could more than mildly inconvenience anyone. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Well," said Ruth, when the sounds of the bells had died away, "when you eight-year-olds kill Evil here in Nuremberg, be sure to bury it at a crossroads and drive a stake through its heart - or you just might see it again at the next full moooooooooooooooooon. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Jones wasn't completely crazy. The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined. Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell - keeping perfect time for eight minutes and thirty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year. The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases. The willful filing off of gear teeth, the willful doing without certain obvious pieces of information - — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I shot her because she had just killed my best friend and my worst enemy with a single hand -grenade.
This episode made me sorry to be alive , made me envy stones.
I would rather have been a stone at the service of the Natural Order — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker! — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

For having the courage to tell the truth during the war when everybody else was telling lies — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

He was doing nothing less now, he thought, than prescribing corrective lenses for Earthling souls. So many of those souls were lost and wretched, Billy believed, because they could not see as well as his little green friends on Tralfamadore. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree. The — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

In the water I am beautiful. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

If there is to be no ceiling on the amount of money a man can take out of our economy, then concomitantly there can be no foundation below which a human being cannot sink. What capitalists must realize is that you are fighting to make capitalism survive, not destroy it; you are fighting to eliminate the seeds of destruction inherent in the status quo."
~Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's letter to Don Matchan, 27 April 1947 — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

would have recognized the opportunity for a world-class joke, but would never allow myself to be funny at the cost of making somebody else feel like something the cat drug in. Let that be my epitaph. *** — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

How embarrassing to be human. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

He had a dazzling talent for spending millions without increasing mankind's stores of anything but chagrin. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

You're not a bad sort, you know, " he said, "particularly when you forget who you are. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Eperience of the Past Million Years?' nothing. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

You were just babies in the war - like the ones upstairs!" I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood. "But you're not going to write it that way, are you." This wasn't a question. It was an accusation. "I - I don't know," I said. "Well, I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I love you, Eliza," I said.
She thought about it. "No," she said at last, "I don't like it."
"Why not?" I said.
"It's as though you were pointing a gun at my head," she said. "It's just a way of getting somebody to say something they probably don't mean. What else can I say, or anybody say, but, 'I love you, too'? — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The white men wouldn't do it either, of course. They called it women's work, and the women called it Nigger work. *** — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Sons of suicides seldom do well. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

This can be useful in rocketry. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I imagined two leather chairs near a fire in a paneled room, where two old soldiers could drink and talk. But she took us into the kitchen. She had put two straight-backed chairs at a kitchen table with a white porcelain top. That table top was screaming with reflected light from a two-hundred-watt bulb overhead. Mary had prepared an operating room. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

To be punctual meant to exist as a point, meant that as well as to arrive somewhere on time. Constant existed as a point - could not imagine what it would, be like to exist in any other way. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It's nice to be nice. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

All men are jerks, all women are psychotic. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

What kind of an animal would do such a thing? The old me, I think. *** — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The question is, rather, whether or not America is to enter a new and distressing phase of history where men no longer pursue happiness but buy it. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I guess all the excitement in bed had more to do with excitement about keeping the human race going than anybody ever imagined. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden. "I know," said Billy. "That's war." "I know. I'm not complaining." "It must have been hell on the ground." "It was," said Billy Pilgrim. "Pity the men who had to do it." "I do." "You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground." "It was all right," said Billy. "Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

waif. They would hear his reedy voice, the one he'd had in the war. He swallowed, knew that all he had for a voice box was a little whistle cut from a willow switch. Worse - he had nothing to say. The crowd — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Life is no way to treat an animal. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It said a lot of things [...] because I was very upset about how Americans couldn't imagine what it was like to be something else, to be something else and proud of it. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

When my tantrum, which is what I call my TV set, flashes boobs and smiles in my face, and says everybody but me is going to get laid tonight, and this is a national emergency, so I've got to rush out and buy a car or pills, or a folding gymnasium I can hide under my bed, I laugh like a hyena. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

america...is the interplay of three hundred million rube goldberg contraptions invented only yesterday — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I see England,
I see France;
I see a little girl's
Underpants! — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

What we have created instead, as customers and employers and investors, is mountains of paper wealth so enormous that a handful of people in charge of them can take millions and billions for themselves without hurting anyone. Apparently.

Many members of my generation are disappointed. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I was about to be attacked by a Doberman pinscher. He was a leading character in an earlier version of this book. *** — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

To be perfectly frank, his ding-dong wouldn't have been what you might call the subject of an exhaustive search. Albert — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

How embarrassing it is to be human. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Another guy came in, and he said he was quitting his job at the Research Laboratory; said anything a scientist worked on was sure to wind up as a weapon, one way or another. Said he didn't want to help politicians with their fugging wars anymore. Name was Breed. I asked him if he was any relation to the boss of the fugging Research Laboratory. He said he fugging well was. Said he was the boss of the Research Laboratory's fugging son. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Here it is, the end of the world; and here I am, almost the very last man; and there it is, the highest mountain in sight. I know now what my karass has been up to, Newt. It's been working night and day for maybe half a million years to get me up that mountain." I wagged my head and nearly wept. "But what, for the love of God, is supposed to be in my hands?" I looked out of the car window blindly as — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

We are what we imagine ourselves to be. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

He found, moreover, that he still knew how to take the weapon apart. That much of his memory, at any rate, had not been wiped out at the hospital. It made him furtively happy to suspect that there were probably other parts of his memory that had been missed as well. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

They went Indian file. First came the scouts, clever, graceful, quiet. They had rifles. Next came the antitank gunner, clumsy and dense, warning Germans away with a Colt .45 automatic in one hand and a trench knife in the other.
Last came Billy Pilgrim, empty-handed, bleakly ready for death. Billy was preposterous - six feet and three inches tall, with a chest and shoulders like a box of kitchen matches. He had no helmet, no overcoat, no weapon, and no boots. On his feet were cheap, low-cut civilian shoes which he had bought for his father's funeral. Billy had lost a heel, which made him bob up-and-down, up-and-down. The involuntary dancing, up-and-down, up-and-down, made his hip joints sore. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes - with babies' legs on one nds and old people's legs at the other — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

He will not hate. He will not kill. There's hope in that. There's no hope in war. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I stand before you now because I never stopped dawdling like an eight-year-old on a spring morning on his way to school. Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn. I am a very happy man. Thank you. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

And the peanut butter-eaters on Earth were preparing to conquer the shazzbutter-eaters on the planet in the book by Kilgore Trout. By this time, the Earthlings hadn't just demolished West Virginia and Southeast Asia. They had demolished everything. So they were ready to go pioneering again.

They studied the shazzbutter-eaters by means of electronic snooping, and determined that they were too numerous and proud and resourceful ever to allow themselves to be pioneered.

So the Earthlings infiltrated the ad agency which had the shazzbutter account, and they buggered the statistics in the ads. They made the average for everything so high that everybody on the planet felt inferior to the majority in very respect.

Then the Earthling armored space ships came and discovered the planet. Only token resistance was offered here and there, because the natives felt so below average. And then the pioneering began. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodely do,
What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,muddily do,
Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

As for national greatness: It is probably true that all nations are great and even holy at the time of death. The Biafrans had never fought before. They fought well this time. They will never fight again. They will never play Finlandia on an ancient marimba again. Peace. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

He could scarcely distinguish between sleep and wakefulness now, on the third day, found no important differences, either, between walking and standing still. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again: Oh, boy - they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: "There are right people to lynch." Who? People not well connected. So — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Whoever it was - he was one of the most vicious sons of bitches who ever lived. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease! — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Potential terrorist is a terrorist — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Billy Pilgrim, there in the creekbed, thought he, Billy Pilgrim, was turning to steam painlessly. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Unk shook his head vaguely. He could think of no apt condensation of his adventures for the obviously ritual mood. Something great was plainly expected of him. He was not up to greatness. He exhaled noisily, letting the congregation know that he was sorry to fail them with his colorlessness. 'I was a victim of a series of accidents,' he said. He shrugged. 'As are we all,' he said. The cheering and dancing began again. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

..."That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?" "Yes." Billy, in fact had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three lady bugs embedded in it. "Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is now why. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be likened unto a system of gears whose teeth have been filed off at random. Such a snaggle-toothed thought machine, driven by a standard or even a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell. The — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.