We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Imagination
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 nutcases want to be president.
—Kurt Vonnegut
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
Topics: Politicians, Politics
Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be.
—Kurt Vonnegut
We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too. … .
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Writing
Einstein’s E=mc2 is an extraordinary concept. So radical: matter and energy are two phases of the same sort of general stuff. There’s only one other idea that radical: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Forgiveness
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
—Kurt Vonnegut
I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.
—Kurt Vonnegut
this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me! Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Faith
I’d rather have written “Cheers” than anything I’ve written.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Reality, Opportunities
Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?
—Kurt Vonnegut
There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Thinking doesn’t seem to help very much. The human brain is too high-powered to have many practical uses in this particular universe.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: The Mind, Mind
New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Knowledge
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Loneliness, Community
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: World
People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Communication, Foresight
There’s only one me, and I’m stuck with him.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Self-love
History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: History
If somebody says, “I love you,” to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? “I love you, too. “
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Love
About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Information, Carpe-diem
What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It’s a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: War
There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to have 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
Topics: Racism
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Caution, Learning
I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Intellectuals, Intelligence
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion … . I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
—Kurt Vonnegut
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Being True to Yourself, Appearance
We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. Only in superstition is there hope. If you want to become a friend of civilization, then become an enemy of the truth and a fanatic for harmless balderdash.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Superstition
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Robert Anton Wilson American Polymath
- Philip Roth American Novelist, Short-story Writer
- Gore Vidal American Novelist
- Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
- Robert A. Heinlein American Science Fiction Writer
- David Foster Wallace American Novelist, Essayist
- Marge Piercy American Poet
- Henry Miller American Novelist
- Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
- William S. Burroughs American Novelist
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