Top 100 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes

#1. I am a human being, not a human doing.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1722
#2. He was a black hole to anyone who might imagine that he or she was a friend of his.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #23533
#3. I was about to be attacked by a Doberman pinscher. He was a leading character in an earlier version of this book. ***

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #31748
#4. It is never a mistake to say good-bye.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #35689
#5. I am a brother to writers everywhere.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #49928
#6. The fact that human beings are now the only animals left on Earth, I confess, seems a confusing sort of victory.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #61835
#7. This is my first visit." "It's

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #64490
#8. Just 'cause something makes you feel better than anything else, that don't mean it's good for you.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #84460
#9. TV is an eraser.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #89616
#10. ... lovemaking, if sincere, is one of the best ideas Satan put in the apple she gave to the serpent to give to Eve.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #92683
#11. Nothing ever really ends. That's the horrible part of being in the short-story business - you have to be a real expert on ends. Nothing in real life ends. 'Millicent at last understands.' Nobody ever understands.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #97470
#12. Re-search means look again, don't it? Means they're looking for something they found once and it got away somehow, and now they got to re-search for it.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #112632
#13. To put it another way: No matter what a young person thinks he or she is really hot stuff at doing, he or she is sooner or later going to run into somebody in the same field who will cut him or her a new asshole, so to speak.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #147202
#14. He was sentenced to six months in prison. He died there of pneumonia. So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #162058
#15. I guess Americans are hated a lot of places.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #174386
#16. Only my complacent Mona crossed the crack with a simple step . . .

She wasn't depressed or angry. In fact, she seemed to verge on laughter. 'He always said he would never take his own advice, because he knew it was worthless.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #177744
#17. Eliot had only one pair of shoes, black ones. They had a crackle finish as a result of an experiment. Eliot once tried to polish them with Johnson's Glo-Coat, which was a floorwax, not intended for shoes.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #179107
#18. The past is prologue!

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #206696
#19. Money can be a great comfort sometimes.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #218522
#20. I don't have nerve enough to commit suicide," she said, "so I might as well do anything anybody says - in the service of mankind." ***

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #231960
#21. One of the first things I discovered when I became an agent was that I couldn't afford an imagination any more

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #275388
#22. No damn cat, no damn Cradle.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #275706
#23. Anybody who has traveled this far on a fool's errand," said Salo, "has no choice but to uphold the honor of fools by completing the errand.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #349159
#24. Ben understood at last that money was one big dragon, with a billion dollars for a head, and a penny on the tip of its tail. It had as many voices as there were men and women, and it captured all who were fools enough to listen to it all the time.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #362593
#25. Whatever we've said, friends, we're saying still-- such as it was, such as it is, such as it will be

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #393661
#26. Here is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but we would never do it, of course. It's just fun to think about.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #423124
#27. They had been the rioters, the smashers of machines.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #424881
#28. He had a dazzling talent for spending millions without increasing mankind's stores of anything but chagrin.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #429140
#29. only nutcases want to be president.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #430415
#30. He will not hate. He will not kill. There's hope in that. There's no hope in war.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #433838
#31. Science is magic that works.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #463318
#32. How embarrassing it is to be human.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #480251
#33. When you're dead you're dead.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #558626
#34. To all my friends and enemies in the buckeye state. Come on over. There's room for everybody in Shangri-La.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #565873
#35. A woman's not a woman till the pills wear off.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #600736
#36. ...we took the 10 machines we agreed were the most beguiling, and we put them on permanent exhibit in the foyer of this library underneath a sign whose words can surely be applied to this whole ruined planet nowadays: THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #603621
#37. She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high-school education.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #625922
#38. That's the worst thing you can do, Unk - remembering back," said Brackman. "That's what they put you in the hospital for in the first place - on account of you remembered too much.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #650367
#39. Where would you rather be tomorrow - on Mars or in the Kingdom of Heaven?

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #656390
#40. and she said, 'So there you are!' She asked Frank what he thought he was doing, and he said, 'Experimenting.' That's what Frank always used to say when people asked him what he thought he was doing. He always said, 'Experimenting.'

(p. 15)

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #684004
#41. Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #702403
#42. I thought the worst of everyone.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #759854
#43. This wearied me, but then, almost everything about the modern world wearies me. I

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #772265
#44. You are what you pretend to be so you better pretend something good.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #785877
#45. The arts..are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #815040
#46. I see England,
I see France;
I see a little girl's
Underpants!

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #820298
#47. and what sunshine are you going to bring into our lives today? Shall we poison the well or burn the house down?

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #825294
#48. It snapped in juicy protest.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #843067
#49. TING-A-LING, YOU SON OF A BITCH!

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #852222
#50. if there is a god, he sure hates people

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #911235
#51. The hinged clogs were transforming his feet into blood puddings.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #923694
#52. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #925492
#53. IF YOU FIND YOUR LIFE tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons," writes Bokonon, "that person may be a member of your karass." At

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #929421
#54. As for national greatness: It is probably true that all nations are great and even holy at the time of death. The Biafrans had never fought before. They fought well this time. They will never fight again. They will never play Finlandia on an ancient marimba again. Peace.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #934046
#55. would have recognized the opportunity for a world-class joke, but would never allow myself to be funny at the cost of making somebody else feel like something the cat drug in. Let that be my epitaph. ***

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #940188
#56. Americans have finally heard about Dresden," said Rumfoord, twenty-three years after the raid.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #951455
#57. There was more. There was always more.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #952968
#58. Nobody else suspected that he was going crazy. Everybody else thought he looked fine and was acting fine. Now he was in the hospital. The doctors agreed; He was going crazy.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1067333
#59. I had to laugh like hell

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1077047
#60. Here's all she had to say about death: "Oh my, oh my.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1094327
#61. All this happened, more or less.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1102167
#62. Lonesome, no more!

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1144824
#63. We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1161596
#64. It's fresh to you because you're too young to know anything but the way things are now.
Actually, it is kind of incredible that things were ever any other way, isn't it?

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1176914
#65. The pride in strength and important mystery showed no less in the eyes of the sweepers than in those of the machinists and inspectors, and in those of the foreman, who alone was without a lunchbox. A

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1222991
#66. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1291089
#67. No," said Trout, "for delighting Jesus Christ by shooting dead a doctor coming to work in an
abortion mill.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1302377
#68. History! Read it and weep!

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1305524
#69. myself have seen the bodies of schoolgirls who were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymen, who were proud of fighting pure evil at the time." This

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1310957
#70. And Halyard suddenly realized that, just as religion and government had been split into disparate entities centuries before, now, thanks to the machines, politics and government lived side by side, but touched almost nowhere.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1346687
#71. Whenever I ask a question, and the pain comes, I know I have asked a really good question.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1367895
#72. Write it all down," Bokonon tells us.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1376947
#73. While bachelors are lonely people, I'm convinced that married men are lonely people with dependents.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1399452
#74. Body sizes can be remarkable for their variations from accepted norms, but still explain almost nothing about the lives led inside those bodies.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1430393
#75. And so it goes...

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1451136
#76. End of the world delight

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1493191
#77. He could scarcely distinguish between sleep and wakefulness now, on the third day, found no important differences, either, between walking and standing still.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1525698
#78. I agree that all religions, including Bokononism, are nothing but lies.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1527580
#79. The twelve sides were said by the architect to represent the twelve great religions of the world. So far, no one had asked the architect to name them. That was lucky, because he couldn't have done it. There

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1528832
#80. Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1549646
#81. I got into some perfectly beautiful trouble

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1550193
#82. I'm in the middle of a sentence," I said. "Who isn't?" she

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1557660
#83. A dinosaur was a reptile

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1568670
#84. When my tantrum, which is what I call my TV set, flashes boobs and smiles in my face, and says everybody but me is going to get laid tonight, and this is a national emergency, so I've got to rush out and buy a car or pills, or a folding gymnasium I can hide under my bed, I laugh like a hyena.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1577164
#85. We are what we imagine ourselves to be.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1580531
#86. Billy was unconscious for two days after that, and he dreamed millions of things, some of them true. The true things were time-travel.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1607834
#87. Back when childhoods were often so protracted, it is unsurprising that so many people got into the lifelong habit of believing, even after their parents were gone, that somebody was always watching over them - God or a saint or a guardian angel or the stars or whatever. People

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1648723
#88. The cattle are lowing
The baby awakes
But the little Lord Jesus
No crying He makes

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1656356
#89. Our most dismaying failure is in the use of our knowledge of what human beings need in the way of bodily and spiritual nourishment. And I suspect that some of the guesses made by our ancestors are partly responsible for the starved bodies and spirits we see everywhere.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1660353
#90. Now's the time for sweet good-bye To what could never be, To promises we ne'er could keep, To a magic you and me. If we should try to prove our love, Our love would be in danger. Let's put our love beyond all harm. Good-bye - sweet, gentle stranger.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1673739
#91. I was thrilled, heartbroken, hilarious, insane.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1687498
#92. He was finally understanding that every bit of it had been real! He had been calm in the midst of the mob because he knew he wasn't going to die on Earth.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1725796
#93. I guess all the excitement in bed had more to do with excitement about keeping the human race going than anybody ever imagined.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1733218
#94. It went bust," said Uncle Alex, with a certain grim, Darwinian satisfaction. My

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1736985
#95. Nice, nice, very nice.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1744137
#96. Fern showed him an organizational plan that had the name Magnum Opus, Incorporated. It was a marvelous engine for doing violence to the spirit of thousands of laws without actually running afoul of so much as a city ordinance.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1761356
#97. I somersaulted lazily and pleasantly through the void,

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1811604
#98. america...is the interplay of three hundred million rube goldberg contraptions invented only yesterday

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1816059
#99. in nonsense is strength

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1831849
#100. war. But I had a good uncle named Alex, who said, when life was most agreeable - and it could be just a pitcher of lemonade in the shade - he would say, "If this isn't nice, what is?

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes #1866204

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