Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut (American Novelist)

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922–2007) was an American novelist and short-story writer. This major voice in American literature was celebrated for his insightful, satirical depictions of the horrors and the ironies of 20th-century civilization.

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Vonnegut served in the air force in World War II, was detained by the Germans, and endured the bombing of Dresden in 1945. He used this experience in his most famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade (1969.)

Much of Vonnegut’s literature is characterized by a fatalistic worldview that embraces modern humanist values. Highlighting the comic absurdity of the human condition, he frequently portrayed characters who search for meaning and order in a meaningless and disordered world.

Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano (1952,) depicts a New York factory town whose mechanized make-up turns its workers and scientists into near-robots. Other notable novels include Cat’s Cradle (1963,) Breakfast of Champions (1973,) Slapstick (1976,) Jailbird (1979,) Deadeye Dick (1983,) and Hocus Pocus (1991.)

Vonnegut’s short stories were collected in Welcome to the Monkey House (1968.) He also published two collections of essays and speeches, Fates Worse than Death (1991) and A Man Without a Country (2005.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Kurt Vonnegut

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Appearance, Being True to Yourself

We are all what we pretend to be, but, we had better be very careful what we pretend.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: People

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

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Earth

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: World

Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
Kurt Vonnegut

You cannot be a good writer of serious fiction if you are not depressed
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Writers

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

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

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Dancing, Dance

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

Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Travel

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

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: Community, Loneliness

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

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

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn’t really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: “he wasn’t going to compose Beethoven’s Fifth.”
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: The Military

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Aging, Laughter, Disappointment

History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: History

It was a thunderingly beautiful experience—voluptuous, sexual, dangerous, and expensive as hell.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Space

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

Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak, and boy, we’ve got a lot more beef steak than any other country, and that’s why you ought to be glad you’re an American. And people have started looking at these big hunks of bloody meat on their plates, you know, and wondering what on earth they think they’re doing.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: America

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

I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled “Science Fiction” and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Science Fiction

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

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

We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Imagination

There’s only one me, and I’m stuck with him.
Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Self-love

I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine.
Kurt Vonnegut

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