Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007)
[Art is] a conspiracy between clever parasites and millionaires to make poor people feel stupid.
A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly lessons about fairness and gentleness. People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. Science has nothing to do with it, friends.
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
Alcohol and marijuana, if used in moderation, plus loud, usually low-class music, make stress and boredom infinitely more bearable.
All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.
All time in all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all bugs in amber.
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Beer, of course, is actually a depressant. But poor people will never stop hoping otherwise.
Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected.
Belief is nearly the whole of the Universe, whether based on truth or not.
Big, undreamed-of things. The people on the edge see them first.
But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.
Dear Future Generations: Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum.
Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules- and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.
Everybody's shaking in his boots, so don't be bluffed.
History is merely a list of surprises. ... It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.
I can think of no more stirring symbol of man's humanity to man than a fire engine.
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.
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.
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: The Only Proof He Needed For The Existence Of God Was Music.
If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.
If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.
My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."
My theory is that all women have hydrofluoric acid bottled up inside.
One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
So it goes.
Suicide is the punctuation mark at the end of many artistic careers.
Take care of the people, and God almighty will take care of Himself.
The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.
The only difference between [George W.] Bush and [Adolf] Hitler is that Hitler was elected.
The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers.
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 nut cases want to be president.
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
True terror is waking up one morning and realizing your high school class is running the country.
We are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you differently.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.
Categories: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Quotes of the day
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