Kurt Vonnegut: Trending quotes

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“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Mother Night

Introduction (1966)
Sometimes misquoted as: Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
Mother Night (1961)

“The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Preface
Welcome to the Monkey House (1968)

“It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Paragraph 78 (p. 13 of Welcome to the Monkey House)
Welcome to the Monkey House (1968), "Harrison Bergeron" (1961)

“We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.”

Kurt Vonnegut

On humans, interviewed by Jon Stewart, The Daily Show http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=18090&amp;title=kurt-vonnegut/ (13 September 2005) <br class="br">Various interviews

“Beer, of course, is actually a depressant. But poor people will never stop hoping otherwise.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

“I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival.”

Kurt Vonnegut

As quoted in The Observer [London] (27 December 1987)
Various interviews

“To be
the eyes
and ears
and conscience
of the Creator of the Universe,
you fool.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Kilgore Trout's unwritten reply to the question "What is the purpose of life?"
Breakfast of Champions (1973)

“I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled “Science Fiction” … and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”

Kurt Vonnegut

"Science Fiction"; originally published in The New York Times Book Review, 5 September 1965
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)

“If facts weren't funny, or scary, or couldn't make you rich, the heck with them.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

“All people are insane," he said. "They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Mother Night

Mother Night (1961)

“It was an appalling thought, to be so well-integrated into the machinery of society and history as to be able to move in only one plane, and along one line.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 4 (p. 41)

“I don't think there would be many jokes, if there weren't constant frustration and fear and so forth. It's a response to bad troubles like crime.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Interview Public Radio International (October 2006)
Various interviews

“The lieutenant-colonel realized for the first time what most people never realize about themselves—that he was not only a victim of outrageous fortune, but one of outrageous fortune’s cruelest agents as well.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 6 “A Deserter in Time of War” (p. 162)

“Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

“He ransacked his memory like a thief going through another man’s billfold.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 22)

“Which brings us to the arts, whose purpose, in common with astrology, is to use frauds in order to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on inside. And on and on.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Bennington College address (1970)

“And the city was lovely, highly ornamented, like Paris, and untouched by war. It was supposedly an “open” city, not to be attacked since there were no troop concentrations or war industries there. But high explosives were dropped on Dresden by American and British planes on the night of February 13, 1945, just about twenty-one years ago, as I now write. There were no particular targets for the bombs. The hope was that they would create a lot of kindling and drive firemen underground. And then tens of thousands of tiny incendiaries were scattered over the kindling, like seeds on freshly turned loam. More bombs were dropped to keep firemen in their holes, and all the little fires grew, joined one another, became one apocalyptic flame. Hey presto: fire storm. It was the largest massacre in European history, by the way. … Everything was gone but the cellars where 135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Mother Night

Introduction (1966)
Mother Night (1961)

“It may surprise you to learn that I take a certain pride, no matter how foolishly mistaken that pride may be, in making my own decisions for my own reasons.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 12 “The Gentleman from Tralfamadore” (p. 285)

“Peculiar Travel Suggestions are Dancing Lessons From God”

Kurt Vonnegut book Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle (1963)