Browsing Quotes By Kurt Vonnegut, page 1
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True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: If This Isn't Nice, What Is?Posted: 27 Jun 2014 at 2:57 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
As I read the book of Genesis, God didn’t give Adam and Eve a whole planet – he gave them a manageable piece of property.
...I suggest to you Adams and Eves that you set as your goals the putting of some small part of the planet into something like safe and sane and decent order.Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: If This Isn't Nice, What Is?Posted: 27 Jun 2014 at 2:56 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
My politics in a nutshell? Let’s stop giving corporations and newfangled contraptions what they need and get back to giving human beings what we need.
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: If This Isn't Nice, What Is?Posted: 27 Jun 2014 at 2:54 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Dostoevsky suggested that one sacred memory from childhood was, perhaps, the best education.
I say to you that one plausible, romantic theory about humanity is perhaps the best prize you can take away from a university.Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: If This Isn't Nice, What Is?Posted: 27 Jun 2014 at 2:52 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Most of us are loaded with Original Sin, but a surprising number of us – not me, God knows – are loaded with Original Virtue. Ain’t that sweet?
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: If This Isn't Nice, What Is?Posted: 27 Jun 2014 at 2:48 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like, great public schools or health insurance for all.
How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God,” and so on. Not exactly planks in a Republican platform.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But often, with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And, of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom?
“Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon?
Gimme a break.Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: If This Isn't Nice, What Is?Posted: 27 Jun 2014 at 2:47 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: If This Isn't Nice, What Is?Posted: 27 Jun 2014 at 2:40 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Your government does not exist, and should not exist, in order to keep you or anybody else – no matter what color, no matter what race, no matter what religion – from getting your damn fool feelings hurt.
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: If This Isn't Nice, What Is?Posted: 27 Jun 2014 at 2:39 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
If Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being – I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: If This Isn't Nice, What Is?Posted: 27 Jun 2014 at 2:38 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I am enchanted by the Sermon on the Mount. Being merciful, it seems to me, is the only good idea we have had so far. Perhaps we will get another good idea by and by. And then, we will have two good ideas.
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: If This Isn't Nice, What Is?Posted: 27 Jun 2014 at 2:34 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
There’s only one rule that I know of: goddammit, you’ve got to be kind!
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: If This Isn't Nice, What Is?Posted: 27 Jun 2014 at 2:33 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before,” Bokonon tells us. “He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: Cat's CradlePosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:17 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
A lover’s a liar,
To himself he lies.
The truthful are loveless,
Like oysters their eyes!Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: Cat's CradlePosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:16 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
As Bokonon tells us, “It is never a mistake to say good-bye.”
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: Cat's CradlePosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:15 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Maturity,” Bokonon tells us, “is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.”
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: Cat's CradlePosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:14 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Maturity, the way I understand it,” he told me, “is knowing what your limitations are.”
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: Cat's CradlePosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:13 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“The highest possible form of treason,” said Minton, “is to say that Americans aren’t loved wherever they go, whatever they do. Claire tried to make the point that American foreign policy should recognize hate rather than imagine love.”
“I guess Americans are hated a lot of places.”
“People are hated a lot of places. Claire pointed out in her letter that Americans, in being hated, were simply paying the normal penalty for being people, and that they were foolish to think they should somehow be exempted from that penalty.”Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: Cat's CradlePosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:12 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Pretty?” he echoed. “Mister, when I see my first lady angel, if God ever sees fit to show me one, it’ll be her wings and not her face that’ll make my mouth fall open. I’ve already seen the prettiest face that ever could be.”
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: Cat's CradlePosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:11 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I was surprised and mawkishly heartbroken. I am always moved by that seldom-used treasure, the sweetness with which most girls can sing.
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: Cat's CradlePosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:11 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn’t explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan.”
Speaker: Kurt VonnegutSource: Cat's CradlePosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:09 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment!