Quotes from book

Slapstick

“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)

“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

“Prologue, and a recurring phrase throughout the book.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slapstick

Slapstick (1976)

“If you can do no good, at least do no harm.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slapstick

Slapstick (1976)

“I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency."”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slapstick

Prologue
Slapstick (1976)

“History is merely a list of surprises. … It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slapstick

Source: Slapstick (1976), Ch. 48