Bokonon's Quotes

#1. The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion of Jesus: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's."
Bokonon's paraphrase was this:
"Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on.

Kurt Vonnegut

#2. And what opinion did Bokonon hold of his own cosmogony?
"Foma! Lies!" he wrote. "A pack of foma!

Kurt Vonnegut

#3. Oh, a very sorry people, yes,
Did I find here.
Oh, they had no music,
And they had no beer.
And, oh, everywhere
Where they tried to perch
Belonged to Castle Sugar, Incorporated,
Or the Catholic church.

Kurt Vonnegut

#4. She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon].

Kurt Vonnegut

#5. All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

Kurt Vonnegut

#6. Christians who have influence in political life must feel as individuals responsibility in front of their own faith. And the duty of encouraging laws that are not in contradiction with the Commandments comes within the mission of the Church.

Karl Lehmann

#7. History!" writes Bokonon. "Read it and weep!

Kurt Vonnegut

#8. 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 just go ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.

Kurt Vonnegut

#9. Write it all down," Bokonon tells us.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

#10. The power granted the Attorney General to intervene in all equal-protection-of-the-law cases is extremely broad and dangerous. Choices made by the Attorney General could follow a political and selected pattern.

John Sparkman

#11. 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.

#12. Tis ever thus: indulgence spoils the base;
Raising up pride, and lawless turbulence,
Like noxious vapors from the fulsome marsh
When morning shines upon it.

Joanna Baillie

#13. I thought this was trash.
Of course it's trash! says Bokonon.

Kurt Vonnegut

#14. As Bokonon says: 'peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god.

Kurt Vonnegut

#15. Maturity, Bokonon tells us, is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists

Kurt Vonnegut

#16. If I am ever put to death on the hook, expect a very human performance.

Kurt Vonnegut

#17. Live by the foma1 that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy. The Books of Bokonon. I: 5

Kurt Vonnegut

#18. Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass.

Kurt Vonnegut

#19. Oh I daresay she can't help it - she's one of the women who oughn't be loved too kindly when they are some primitive desire for brutality makes them try to provoke it.

Dodie Smith

#20. I think we are at the very beginning of high changes, not only in terms of digital film, but in the way the movies will be screened, whether they'll be screened on phones, on computers - on everything.

Michel Hazanavicius

#21. Live by the foma(Harmless untruths) that make you brave
and kind and healthy and happy.

Kurt Vonnegut

#22. SOMETIMES THE POOL-PAH," Bokonon tells us, "exceeds the power of humans to comment." Bokonon translates pool-pah at one point in The Books of Bokonon as "shit storm" and at another point as "wrath of God.

Kurt Vonnegut