Quotes by kurt vonnegut

“Aside from battles, the history of nations seemed to consist of nothing but powerless old poops like myself, heavily medicated and vaguely beloved in the long ago, coming to kiss the boots of young...”

“A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would be two such bands of light. Our awareness ...”

“Were doomed to repeat the past no matter what. Thats what it is to be alive. Its pretty dense kids who havent figured that out by the time theyre 10. ... Most kids cant afford to go to Harvard and ...”

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.'Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were th...”

“The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad's third language, and much of that seems piquant in his us...”

“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into...”

“We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.”

“That's the point. Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. So people getting married think they're wonderful, and that they're going to have a baby-- that's wonderful, when ...”

“You're the man who stands on the street corner with a roll of toilet paper, and written on each square are the words, 'I love you.' And each passer-by, no matter who, gets a square all his or her o...”

“If I hadnt spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldnt have any idea what was meant by 'free will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I...”

“She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.”

“A winded, defeated-looking fat woman in filthy coveralls trudged beside us, hearing what Miss Pefko said. She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people wh...”

“I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," EPICAC had written after Pat's and my lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will l...”

“The statue was of a nude woman playing a slide trombone. It was entitles, enigmatically, Evelyn and Her Magic Violin.”

“Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy, but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises in similar ways. They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war. Rosewate...”

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth," the long out-of-print science fiction writer went on.”

“Oh, a sleeping drunkard Up in Central Park, And a lion-hunter In the jungle dark, And a Chinese dentist,And a British queen--All fit togetherIn the same machine.Nice, nice, very nice;Nice, nice, ve...”

“Be aware of this truth that the people on this earth could be joyous, if only they would live rationally and if they would contribute mutually to each others' welfare.This world is not a vale of so...”

“There was a photograph of Trout. He was an old man with a full black beard. He looked like a frightened, aging Jesus, whose sentence to crucifixion had been commuted to imprisonment for life.”

“The reason creatures wanted to use language instead of mental telepathy was that they found out they could get so much more done with language. Language made them so much more active. Mental telepa...”