Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Travel
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
I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine.
—Kurt Vonnegut
There’s only one me, and I’m stuck with him.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Self-love
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
—Kurt Vonnegut
We are all what we pretend to be, but, we had better be very careful what we pretend.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: People
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Class, Age
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
We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Imagination
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
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
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
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
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
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
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: Carpe-diem, Information
Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Laughter, Aging, Disappointment
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Dancing, Dance
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
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: Foresight, Communication
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
You cannot be a good writer of serious fiction if you are not depressed
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Writers
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
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
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: Mind, The Mind
We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.
—Kurt Vonnegut
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
It was a thunderingly beautiful experience—voluptuous, sexual, dangerous, and expensive as hell.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: Space
History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.
—Kurt Vonnegut
Topics: History
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