Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Quotes

• “That's the point. Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. So people getting married think they'...”
• “If you go back through history, you’ll find that the people who have been most eager to rule, to make the laws, to enfor...”
• “Rumfoord had known that Constant would try to debase the picture by using it in commerce. Constant's father had done a s...”
• “The troops and their ladies had first drunk champagne. There were also remains of sandwiches, and I stepped on one, whic...”
• “Jonah-John-if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still-not because I have been unlucky for others, but because ...”
• “Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. ...”
• “[Books] were devices as crassly practical for storing or transmitting language, as the latest Silicon Valley miracles. B...”
• “I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. I think it's a heartless government that will l...”
• “But people didn't have to pay as much attention to the awful truth. As the living legend of the cruel tyrant in the city...”
• “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 ...”
• “The time would not pass. Somebody was playing with the clocks, and not only the electronic clocks but the wind-up kind t...”
• “He gave me the key, which I later discovered would open practically every door in the hotel. I thanked him, and I made a...”
• “I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres ...”
• “Sons of suicides seldom do well. Characteristically, they find life lacking a certain zing. They tend to feel more rootl...”
• “When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment,...”
• “The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford...”
• “Ladies and Gentlemen, I stand before you now because I never stopped dawdling like an eight-year-old on a spring morning...”
• “Do you realize that all great literature — "Moby Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," "A Farewell to Arms," "The Scarlet Letter," ...”
• “What an optimistic animal man is!" said Rumfoord rosily. "Imagine expecting the species to last for ten million more yea...”
• “A winded, defeated-looking fat woman in filthy coveralls trudged beside us, hearing what Miss Pefko said. She turned to ...”
• “Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. ...”
• “A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a co...”
• “The doctors agreed: He was going crazy...they didn't think it had anything to do with the war. They were sure Billy was ...”
• “I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does ...”
• “Bertrand Russell declared that, in case he met God, he would say to Him, "Sir, you did not give us enough information." ...”
• “... the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the newgovernment owned human slaves. They used human be...”
• “People talk a lot about all the homosexuals there are to see in Greenwich Village, but it was all the neuters that caugh...”
• “Artists," he said, "are people who say, 'I can't fix my country or my state or my city, or even my marriage. But by goll...”
• “We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt ...”
• “If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant b...”
• “I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other wr...”
• “The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very ...”
• “As for children's working off aggressions, I'm against it. They are going to need all the aggressions they can contain f...”
• “And, if you'll investigate the history of science, my dear boy, I think you'll find that most of the really big ideas ha...”
• “Oh, a sleeping drunkard Up in Central Park, And a lion-hunter In the jungle dark, And a Chinese dentist,And a British qu...”
• “As for national greatness: It is probably true that all nations are great and even holy at the time of death. The Biafra...”
• “The humanoids told Don that if he went home with a whore, she would cook him a meal of petroleum and coal products at fa...”
• “He was looking for programs on which he might be allowed to appear. But it was too early in the evening for programs tha...”
• “I learned the joke at the core of American self-improvement: knowledge was so much junk to be processed one way or anoth...”
• “I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasti...”
• “I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasti...”
• “There was no question about it- the girl in the photograph was staggeringly beautiful. She was Miss Canal Zone, a runner...”
• “When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - ev...”
• “During the Vietnam War, every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were ...”
• “...we took the 10 machines we agreed were the most beguiling, and we put them on permanent exhibit in the foyer of this ...”
• “...because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything...”
• “The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past ...”
• “The very best thing you can be in life is a teacher, provided you are crazy in love with what you teach, and that your c...”
• “People are hated a lot of places. Claire pointed out in her letter that Americans, in being hated, were simply paying th...”
• “Pretty, was she?""Pretty?" he echoed. "Mister, when I see my first lady angel, if God ever sees fit to show me one, it'l...”