Vonnegut Politics Quotes & Sayings

I have never begun a novel which wasn't going to stretch me further than I had ever stretched before. — Peter Carey

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful. — Kurt Vonnegut

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. — Kurt Vonnegut

The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected. — Kurt Vonnegut

Because I'm Parisian, I wanted to show a Paris that I don't see at the movies, so I spent a lot of time looking for places that have never been filmed, for streets that have never been filmed because there's a thing about Paris, where it's kind of like a charming music box, this luminous cocoon, like those things that have fake snow in them that you turn upside down. — Louis Garrel

My politics in a nutshell: let's stop giving corporations and newfangled contraptions what they need, and get back to giving human beings what we need. — Kurt Vonnegut

I'm not an expert on the Middle East or terrorism or the use of military force or politics. It's all I can do to know a little bit about how to help people raise their kids and what to do when they get sick. When a war happens, I just hope it gets over with quickly so that how we take care of children becomes more important again. — Mark Vonnegut

People are hated a lot of places. Claire pointed out in her letter that Americans, in being hated, were simply paying the normal penalty for being people, and that they were foolish to think they should somehow be exempted from that penalty. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Playing guitar is like telling the truth. — B.B. King

And Halyard suddenly realized that, just as religion and government had been split into disparate entities centuries before, now, thanks to the machines, politics and government lived side by side, but touched almost nowhere. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Few books I had read so directly and wholly addressed that fundamental fact of existence: all organisms, whether goldfish or grandchild, die. — Paul Kalanithi

If you go back through history, you'll find that the people who have been most eager to rule, to make the laws, to enforce the laws and to tell everybody exactly how God Almighty wants things here on Earth - those people have forgiven themselves and their friends for any-thing and everything. But they have been absolutely disgusted and terrified by the natural sexuality of common men and women. — Kurt Vonnegut

Sisters, brothers and the whities, Blacks and the crackers, Police and their backers, They're all political actors — Curtis Mayfield

If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington D.C. — Kurt Vonnegut

The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon. — Kurt Vonnegut

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative. — Kurt Vonnegut

I had traveled to Russia and met with Snowden, which was a pretty involved meeting that required encrypted communication and the like. And it was fascinating because of who he is and what he's done. And more so because what's going on between our two countries, Russia and the U.S., and to meet Edward Snowden in Russia was unforgettable. — Jared Leto

You cannot be anything if you want to be everything. — Solomon Schechter

Many years ago I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas. — Kurt Vonnegut

The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it-and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tennis with. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts' content. And we can even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently. — Kurt Vonnegut

Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons. In the absence of any real intercommunication between one part of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange. — George Orwell

The atonement of Jesus Christ is the only remedy and rest for my soul. — Martin Van Buren

Or they'll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics — Kurt Vonnegut

Samuel became even more interested in politics than his father had been, served the Republican Party tirelessly as a king-maker, caused that party to nominate men who would whirl like dervishes, bawl fluent Babylonian, and order the militia to fire into crowds whenever a poor man seemed on the point of suggesting that he and a Rosewater were equal in the eyes of the law. — Kurt Vonnegut

But I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got here. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the crazymaking games going on today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls' basketball. — Kurt Vonnegut

He hadn't killed nearly as many people as I had. But then again, he hadn't had my advantage, which was the full cooperation of our Government. — Kurt Vonnegut

A woman's not a woman till the pills wear off. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.