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Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was an American writer. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction, with further collections being published after his death. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five .

Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Vonnegut attended Cornell University but dropped out in January 1943 and enlisted in the United States Army. As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in World War II and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden and survived the Allied bombing of the city by taking refuge in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, with whom he had three children. He later adopted his sister's three sons, after she died of cancer and her husband was killed in a train accident.

Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. The novel was reviewed positively but was not commercially successful. In the nearly 20 years that followed, Vonnegut published several novels that were only marginally successful, such as Cat's Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater . Vonnegut's breakthrough was his commercially and critically successful sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. The book's anti-war sentiment resonated with its readers amidst the ongoing Vietnam War and its reviews were generally positive. After its release, Slaughterhouse-Five went to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list, thrusting Vonnegut into fame. He was invited to give speeches, lectures and commencement addresses around the country and received many awards and honors.

Later in his career, Vonnegut published several autobiographical essays and short-story collections, including Fates Worse Than Death , and A Man Without a Country . After his death, he was hailed as a morbidly comical commentator on the society in which he lived and as one of the most important contemporary writers. Vonnegut's son Mark published a compilation of his father's unpublished compositions, titled Armageddon in Retrospect. In 2017, Seven Stories Press published Complete Stories, a collection of Vonnegut's short fiction including five previously unpublished stories. Complete Stories was collected and introduced by Vonnegut friends and scholars Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield. Numerous scholarly works have examined Vonnegut's writing and humor. Wikipedia  

✵ 11. November 1922 – 11. April 2007   •   Other names Vonegut, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Kurt Vonnegut: 318   quotes 348   likes

Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

“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)

God , People , Thinking , Reading

“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)

Heart

““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)

Evil

““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 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)

Alcohol , Time

“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)

“How embarrassing to be human.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

““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)

Hell

“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)

People

“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)

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

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Science

“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)

Time

“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)

Love

“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
Cat's Cradle (1963)

Learning

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

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

“[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)

“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)

People , Universe

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

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

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

Kurt Vonnegut

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

Literature

“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)

People , Beauty , Evil , Housing

“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)

Suicide

“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)

Truth , Lie , Hope , Learning

“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)

Personality

“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)

Friendship , Pleasure , Soul

“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.”

Kurt Vonnegut

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

People

“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.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Bennington College address (1970)

People , Feeling , Communication , Birthday

“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)

God , Hate , Imagination , Evil

“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)

Money , People , Bee

“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.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Cold Turkey (2004)

“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)

Drink , Light

“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)

Idea

“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)

War , World , Dead , Country

“I would say, ‘Is there anything I can do?’—but Skip once told me that that was the most hateful and stupid expression in the English language.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Epilogue “Reunion with Stony” (p. 313)
The Sirens of Titan (1959)

Hate , Stupidity

“In order to get what we've got, Anita, we have, in effect, traded these people out of what was the most important thing on earth to them — the feeling of being needed and useful, the foundation of self-respect.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 18 (p. 169)

People , Feeling

“It is a gruesome Disneyland. Nobody is cute there.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Bluebeard

Bluebeard (1987)

“Fish! Fish! Fish!”

Kurt Vonnegut book Galápagos

Galápagos (1985)

Fish

“Busy, busy, busy.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle (1963)

Business

“When you're dead you're dead.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Mother Night

Introduction (1966)
Mother Night (1961)

Dead

“Old Norwegian Proverb: Swedes have short dicks but long memories.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

Memory

“During the Vietnam War, Abbie Hoffman announced that the new high was banana peels taken rectally. So then FBI scientists stuffed banana peels up their asses to find out if this was true or not.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

War

“Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Cold Turkey (2004)

Light , Courage , Literature

“Billy coughed when the door was opened, and when he coughed he shit thin gruel. This was in accordance with the Third Law of Motion according to Sir Isaac Newton. This law tells us that for each reaction there is a reaction which is equal and opposite in direction. This can be useful in rocketry.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

Law

“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97: Wear sunscreen.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Opening words to a commencement address supposedly given by Vonnegut at M.I.T., but actually based on Mary Schmich's June 1, 1997 column for the Chicago Tribune
Misattributed

“About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort.
I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead. My German-American ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in our Middle West about the time of our Civil War, called themselves "Freethinkers," which is the same sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut wrote, for example, "If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?"
I myself have written, "If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake."”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

In A Man Without a Country (2005) p. 80–81 Vonnegut makes a very similar statement:
How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do. "If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?"
But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being.
I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake.
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

God , Time , Dead , War

“In the nightmare of a warring world, it takes peculiar skills to get along.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Armageddon in Retrospect

Story: "The commandant's desk" - p.193
Armageddon in Retrospect (2008)

World , War

“But listen: If anyone here should wind up on a gurney in a lethal-injection facility, maybe the one at Terre Haute, here is what your last words should be: "This will certainly teach me a lesson."”

Kurt Vonnegut book Armageddon in Retrospect

"At Clowes Hall, Indianapolis, April 27 2007" - p.22 [Page numbers per the 2008 Jonathan Cape hardback edition.]
(From a speech written by Kurt Vonnegut before his death but delivered posthumously on his behalf by son Mark Vonnegut.)
Armageddon in Retrospect (2008)

“You must all take instructions from me!”

Kurt Vonnegut

the conscience shrieks, in effect, to all the other mental processes. The other processes try it for a while, note that the conscience is unappeased, that it continues to shriek, and they note, too, that the outside world has not been even microscopically improved by the unselfish acts the conscience has demanded. They rebel at last. They pitch the tyrannous conscience down an oubliette, weld shut the manhole cover of that dark dungeon. They can hear the conscience no more. In the sweet silence, the mental processes look about for a new leader, and the leader most prompt to appear whenever the conscience is stilled, Enlightened Self-interest, does appear. Enlightened Self-interest gives them a flag, which they adore on sight. It is essentially the black and white Jolly Roger, with these words written beneath the skull and crossbones, 'The hell with you, Jack, I've got mine!"
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)