
As quoted in "The Status of Annexed Territory and of its Free Civilized Inhabitants" (1901), North American Review, vol. 172, no. 530 (January 1901), p. 22.
Mayor, &c. of Colchester v. Seaber (1765), 3 Burr. Part IV. 1871.
As quoted in "The Status of Annexed Territory and of its Free Civilized Inhabitants" (1901), North American Review, vol. 172, no. 530 (January 1901), p. 22.
“God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.”
"The Tosh Horse," The New Statesman (1925); later included in Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews (1928), ch. 11
“God forbid that we should have any desire to return to that living hell!”
Individualism and Socialism (1933)
Context: Even if the days of 1928 and early 1929 could be brought back again, the economic situation would be utterly indefensible on moral grounds. The greedy scramble for private gain and special privilege, the gambling spirit and the ruthless determination to gain wealth by means fair and foul, the callous indifference to how the other half lived or at most the throwing of a few crumbs of philanthropy, the bitter exploitation of the weak and the brutal suppression of the workers as they attempted to organize in defense of their minimum rights, the cruel assumption that there must always be a wide gulf between the rich and the poor, the willingness to send unnumbered victims to their doom on the battlefield in defense of vested interests—all these and countless other evils are inherent in the economic order which held sway in 1929. God forbid that we should have any desire to return to that living hell!
“God forbid that Judges upon their oath should make resolutions to enlarge jurisdiction.”
Reeves v. Buttler (1715), Gilbert, Eq. Ca. 196; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 137.
“By the logic of the high-rise those most innocent of any offence became the most guilty”
Source: High-Rise (1975), Ch. 13
Context: The untruth of the accusation, which they all knew well, only served to reinforce it... By the logic of the high-rise those most innocent of any offence became the most guilty.
2010s, 2019, October, Statement on the Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
As quoted in "Vonnegut's Blues For America" Sunday Herald (7 January 2006)
Various interviews
“If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now."”
That's my favorite joke.
A Man Without a Country (2005)