Kurt Vonnegut: Trending quotes

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Kurt Vonnegut: 636 quotes349 likes

“There was not a country in the world that had not fought a battle in the war of all Earth against the invaders from Mars.
All was forgiven.
All living things were brothers, and all dead things were even more so.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 10 “An Age of Miracles” (p. 216)

“We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Kilgore Trout's epitaph
Unsourced paraphrase or variant: We are human only to the extent that our ideas remain humane.
Breakfast of Champions (1973)

“Listen:
The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't let her. "Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on?" she asked me.
"The big show is inside my head," I said”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

“There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.”

Cold Turkey (2004)

“A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Opening line of novel.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Mother Night

Mother Night (1961)

“About astrology and palmistry: They are good because they make people feel vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.”

Bennington College address (1970)

“The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”

"In a Manner that Must Shame God Himself"
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)

“His poor soul was flooded with pleasure as he realized that one friend was all that a man needed in order to be well-supplied with friendship.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 11 “We Hate Malachi Constant Because...” (p. 259)

“Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

page 19
Breakfast of Champions (1973)

“Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie withing every human being, looked outward—pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 7)

“His plan? To pass out weapons to slaves, so they could overthrow their masters. Suicide.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

“Many people found our house spooky, and the attic in fact as full of evil when I was born. It housed a collection of more than three hundred antique and modern firearms. Father had bought them during his and Mother's six-month honeymoon in Europe in 1922. Father thought them beautiful, but they might as well have been copperheads and rattlesnakes. They were murder.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Deadeye Dick

Deadeye Dick (1982)

“Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines in only twenty-six symbols, ten arabic numbers, and about eight punctuation marks.”

Public conversation with Lee Stringer, in Like Shaking Hands With God (1999)
Various interviews

“My father said "When in doubt, castle."”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

“I tell you, Mr. Constant,” he said genially, “it’s a thankless job, telling people it’s a hard, hard Universe they’re in.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 25)

“[Vietnam] only made billionaires out of millionaires. [Iraq] is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Cat's Cradle

Chapter 124 http://books.google.com/books?id=61W3aGvTVgIC&q=%22Beware+of+the+man+who+works+hard+to+learn+something+learns+it+and+finds+himself+no+wiser+than+before%22&pg=PA281#v=onepage: Frank's Ant Farm <br class="br">Cat's Cradle (1963)

“Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

“The highest treason in the USA is to say Americans are not loved, no matter where they are, no matter what they are doing there.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)