Kurt Vonnegut: Trending quotes

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Kurt Vonnegut: 636 quotes349 likes

“One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Cold Turkey (2004)

“Like most science-fiction writers, Trout knew almost nothing about science.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

“We could have saved the earth, but we were too damned cheap.”

Kurt Vonnegut

If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young (2013)

“These displaced people need something, and the clergy can’t give it to them—or it’s impossible for them to take what the clergy offers. The clergy says it’s enough, and so does the Bible. The people say it isn’t enough, and I suspect they’re right.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 9 (p. 92)

““The hell with the human race!” said Beatrice.
“You’re a member of it, you know,” said Rumfoord.
“Then I’d like to put in for a transfer to the chimpanzees!” said Beatrice. “No chimpanzee husband would stand by while his wife lost all her coconuts.””

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 2 “Cheers in the Wirehouse” (p. 52)

“How embarrassing to be human.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

“We don't piss in your ashtrays,
So please don't throw cigarettes in our urinals.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Eliot Rosewater's favorite poem, from the wall of the men's room at the Log Cabin Inn.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

“Why so many of us a million years ago purposely knocked out major chunks of our brains with alcohol from time to time remains an interesting mystery. It may be we were trying to give evolution a shove in the right direction — in the direction of smaller brains.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Galápagos

Galápagos (1985)

““I liked him very much,” said Constant.
“The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms,” said Beatrice.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 41)

““Why are you quitting?”
“Sick of my job.”
“Because what you were doing was morally bad?” suggested the voice.
“Because it wasn’t getting anybody anywhere. Because it was getting everybody nowhere.”
“Because it was evil?” insisted the voice.
“Because it was pointless.””

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 29 (p. 271)

“During my next visit with you, fellow-believers,” he said, “I shall tell you a parable about people who do things that they think God Almighty wants done. In the meanwhile, you would do well, for background on this parable, to read everything that you can lay your hands on about the Spanish Inquisition.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 7 “Victory” (p. 181)

“Here lies Howard Campbell’s essence,
Freed from his body’s noisome nuisance.
His body, empty, prowls the earth,
Earning what a body’s worth.
If his body and his essence remain apart,
Burn his body, but spare this, his heart.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Mother Night

Mother Night (1961)

“This script, it seems to me, is the work of professionals who yearned to be as charming as inspired amateurs can sometimes be.”

Kurt Vonnegut

"Preface"
Between Time and Timbuktu (1972)

“I asked this heroic pet lover how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. Salvador Biagiani was philosophical. He said it sure beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Viet Nam War.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

“He held up his watch to sunlight, letting it drink in the wherewithal that was to solar watches what money was to Earth men.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 17)

“My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die. There is evil for you. We cannot get rid of mankind's fleetingly evil wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true. I give you a holy word: DISARM.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Deadeye Dick

Statement of the husband of the woman killed in the accident
Deadeye Dick (1982)

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle (1963)

“I was lucky enough on this trip to interview none other than the late Adolf Hitler. I was gratified to learn that he now feels remorse for any actions of his, however indirectly, which might have had anything to do with the violent deaths suffered by thirty-five million people during World War II. He and his mistress Eva Braun, of course were among those casualties, along with four million other Germans, six million Jews, eighteen million citizens of the Soviet Union and so on.
“I paid my dues with everyone else,” he said.
It is his hope that a modest monument, possibly a stone cross, since he was a Christian, will be erected somewhere in his memory, possibly on the grounds of the United Nations Headquarters in New York. It should be incised, he said, with his name and dates 1889-1945. Underneath should be a two-word sentence in German: “Entschuldigen Sie.”
Roughly translated into English, this comes out, “I beg your pardon,” or “Excuse Me.””

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

“When I was a naive young recruit in Spain, I used to wonder why soldiers bayoneted oil paintings, shot the noses off statues and defecated into grand pianos. I now understand: it was to teach civilians the deepest sort of respect for men in uniform — uncontrollable fear.”

Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

"Harold Ryan"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)

“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 11 “We Hate Malachi Constant Because...” (p. 253)