Kurt Vonnegut Quotes (318 quotes, page 5)

“People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Interview Public Radio International (October 2006)
Various interviews

Hate , People , Thinking , Laughter

“Why throw money at problems? That's what money is for.
Should the nation's wealth be redistributed? It has been and continues to be redistributed to a few people in a manner strikingly unhelpful.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Timequake

Timequake (1997)

Money , People , Problem , Wealth

“Don't lecture me on race relations. I don't have a molecule of prejudice. I've been in battle with every kind of man there is. I've been in bed with every kind of woman there is — from a Laplander to a Tierra del Fuegian. If I'd ever been to the South Pole, there'd be a hell of a lot of penguins who looked like me.”

Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

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

Hell

“Well, I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president.”

Kurt Vonnegut

As quoted in "Kurt Vonnegut's 'Stardust Memory'" http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2006/1326, Harvey Wasserman, The Free Press (4 March 2006)
Various interviews

“If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now."”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

That's my favorite joke.
A Man Without a Country (2005)

God , Hope

“Eliza and I composed a precocious critique of the Constitution of the United States of America … We argued that is was as good a scheme for misery as any, since its success in keeping the common people reasonably happy and proud depended on the strength of the people themselves — and yet it prescribed no practical machinery which would tend to make the people, as opposed to their elected representatives, strong.
We said it was possible that the framers of the Constitution were blind to the beauty of persons who were without great wealth or powerful friends or public office, but who were nonetheless genuinely strong.
We thought it was more likely, though, that their framers had not noticed that it was natural, and therefore almost inevitable, that human beings in extraordinary and enduring situations should think of themselves of composing new families. Eliza and I pointed out that this happened no less in democracies than in tyrannies, since human beings were the same the wide world over, and civilized only yesterday.
Elected representatives, hence, could be expected to become members of the famous and powerful family of elected representatives — which would, perfectly naturally, make them wary and squeamish and stingy with respect to all the other sorts of families which, again, perfectly naturally, subdivided mankind.
Eliza and I … proposed that the Constitution be amended so as to guarantee that every citizen, no matter how humble, or crazy or incompetent or deformed, somehow be given membership in some family as covertly xenophobic and crafty as the one their public servants formed.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slapstick

Source: Slapstick (1976), Ch. 6

People , World , Family , Beauty

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers — joined in the serious business of keeping our food, shelter, clothing and loved ones from combining with oxygen.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

"Eliot Rosewater" to a group of volunteer firemen.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

Love , Food , Business , Clothes

“Drawn crudely in the dust of three window-panes were a swastika, a hammer and sickle, and the Stars and Stripes. I had drawn the three symbols weeks before, at the conclusion of an argument about patriotism with Kraft. I had given a hearty cheer for each symbol, demonstrating to Kraft the meaning of patriotism to, respectively, a Nazi, a Communist, and an American. "Hooray, hooray, hooray," I'd said.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Mother Night

Mother Night (1961)

Star

“It is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln. He always steals the show.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

“The new heroism — put a village idiot into a pressure cooker, seal it up tight, and shoot him at the moon.”

Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

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

“All the things you are are going to be sued and sued successfully. And, while the litigants may not be able to get blood from turnips, they can certainly ruin the turnips in the process of trying.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 3 “United Hotcake Preferred” (p. 85)

“You go up to a man, and you say, ‘How are things going, Joe?’ And he says, ‘Oh fine, fine—couldn’t be better.’ And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 3 “United Hotcake Preferred” (p. 69)

Hell , Time , Help

“Make love when you can. It's good for you.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Mother Night

Introduction (1966)
Mother Night (1961)

Love , Making love

“What do I myself think of this particular book? I feel lousy about it, but I always feel lousy about my books.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Books , Feeling , Thinking

“[Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife] is for me a secretly deep history of a generation of middle-class American males, my own, which was taught by parents and athletic coaches and scoutmasters and military chaplains and quack doctors and so on to be deeply ashamed of masturbation and wet dreams.
And the hidden plea in the book is one which first appeared in my eyes when I was fourteen, say, and which has not vanished entirely to this day. It is part of the mystery of me. The plea is addressed by old-fashioned males forever full of jism to any pretty human female, on the street, in a magazine, in a movie — anywhere. The plea is this: "Please, pretty lady, don't make me play with my private parts again."”

Kurt Vonnegut book Palm Sunday

"The Sexual Revolution" (ndg)
Palm Sunday (1981)

Books , Dreams , History , Fashion

“What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?”

Kurt Vonnegut book Jailbird

Source: Jailbird (1979), p. 24

Life

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”

Kurt Vonnegut book Bluebeard

Source: Bluebeard (1987), p. 168

Freedom , Perfection

“Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people’s blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.
“Every failure of Earthling leadership has been traceable to a lack on the part of the leader,” says Rumfoord, “of at least one of these three things.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 7 “Victory” (p. 174)

People , World , Religion , Way

“I know that millions of dollars have been spent to produce this splendid graduating class, and that the main hope of your teachers was, once they got through with you, that you would no longer be superstitious. I'm sorry — I have to undo that now. I beg you to believe in the most ridiculous superstition of all: that humanity is at the center of the universe, the fulfiller or the frustrator of the grandest dreams of God Almighty.
If you can believe that, and make others believe it, then there might be hope for us. Human beings might stop treating each other like garbage, might begin to treasure and protect each other instead. Then it might be all right to have babies again.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Bennington College address (1970)

God , Dreams , Hope , Teachers

“Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why go right ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle (1963)

God , World , Sadness , Smile

“I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 10 “An Age of Miracles” (p. 242)

Thinking

“He was a graduate of West Point, a military academy which turned young men into homicidal maniacs for use in war.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Men , War

“Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 2 “Cheers in the Wirehouse” (p. 45; epigram)

Feeling , Mountain , Thinking

““Look,” said Rumfoord, “life for a punctual person is like a roller coaster.” He turned to shiver his hands in her face. “All kinds of things are going to happen to you! Sure,” he said, “I can see the whole roller coaster you’re on. And sure—I could give you a piece of paper that would tell you about every dip and turn, warn you about every bogeyman that was going to pop out at you in the tunnels. But that wouldn’t help you any.”
“I don’t see why not,” said Beatrice.
“Because you’d still have to take the roller-coaster ride,” said Rumfoord. “I didn’t design the roller coaster, I don’t own it, and I don’t say who rides and who doesn’t. I just know what it’s shaped like.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 2 “Cheers in the Wirehouse” (pp. 57-58)

Life , Help , Personality

“Doctor Paul Proteus, son of a successful man, himself rich with prospects of being richer, counted his material blessings. He found that he was in excellent shape to afford integrity.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 13 (p. 132)

Success

“If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides. So it goes.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Mother Night

Introduction (1966)
Mother Night (1961)

“I asked Rob Roy where he had gone to college.
"Yale," he said.
I told him what Helen Dole said about Yale, that it ought to be called "Plantation Owners' Tech."
"I don't get it," he said.
"I had to ask her to explain it myself," I said. "She said Yale was where plantation owners learned how to get the natives to kill each other instead of them."”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

Learning

“Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?”

Kurt Vonnegut

I Love You, Madame Librarian (2004)

“This silly playlet seemed to satisfy them completely as a picture of what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who was against them, and why some people were against them. It was a beautifully simple picture these procession leaders had. It was as though a navigator, in order to free his mind of worries, had erased all the reefs from his maps.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 21 (p. 212)

People

“The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Interviewed by J. Rentilly, "The Best Jokes Are Dangerous" http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2002/09/16vonnegut1.html, McSweeny's (September 2002)
Various interviews

Truth , Art , Way

“Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Dead

“Son—they say there isn’t any royalty in this country, but do you want me to tell you how to be king of the United States of America? Just fall through the hole in a privy and come out smelling like a rose.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 3 “United Hotcake Preferred” (p. 65; epigram)

Country

“Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slapstick

Prologue
Slapstick (1976)

Love , Thinking

“Like all real heroes, Charley had a fatal flaw. He refused to believe that he had gonorrhea, whereas the truth was that he did.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

On Charley Warmergran, the Fire Chief of Rosewater.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

Truth

“You couldn't help that you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed — so you were a good man just the same.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Jailbird

Jailbird (1979)

People , Help , Heart

“Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn't the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

World , Thinking , Country

“The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 5 “Letter From an Unknown Hero” (p. 127)

“Do you think Arabs are dumb? They gave us our numbers. Try doing long division with Roman numerals.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

Thinking

“Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Cold Turkey (2004)

Truth , Thinking

“[Freedom of speech] isn't something somebody else gives you. That's something you give to yourself.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

Freedom

“They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Cold Turkey (2004)
Context: 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 bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

Christmas

“They're playin our song Gene!”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)