100 Life Altering Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

  

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.

  

I want to stand 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.

  

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

  

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC

Music

  

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

  

And so it goes...

  

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

  

And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

  

Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.

  

How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

  

And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

Think

  

The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.

  

Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.

  

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward.

  

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.

  

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

Trying

  

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.

  

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

  

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

  

To be is to do - Socrates To do is to be - Sartre Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra

  

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

  

Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

Think

  

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.

  

The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected.

  

I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.

  

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

Life , Like , Trying

  

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?

  

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

  

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

  

Science is magic that works.

  

All this happened, more or less.

  

A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.

  

If you can do no good, at least do no harm.

  

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.

Like

  

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.

  

Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.

  

There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

Time

  

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.

Miracle

  

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

  

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

Past

  

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'.

Me

  

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?

  

And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.

Me

  

I wanted all things To seem to make some sense, So we could all be happy, yes, Instead of tense. And I made up lies So that they all fit nice, And I made this sad world A par-a-dise.

  

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'.

  

I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.

  

Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.

  

That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.

  

Wake up, you idiots! Whatever made you think that money was so valuable?

Think

  

You can't just eat good food. You've got to talk about it too. And you've got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food.

  

I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer." "What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?

Think

  

The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.

  

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

  

No good at life, but very funny sometimes with the commentary.

Life

  

I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.

  

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.

  

Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe.

  

We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.

Think , Trying

  

She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.

  

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

  

All right - I'll tell you what you did for me: you went for happy, silly, beautiful walks with me.

Me

  

We could have saved [the Earth] but we were too damned cheap.

  

If your brains were dynamite there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off.

  

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

  

It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.

Like

  

Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.

Never

  

I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living.

Think

  

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

Music

  

There are too many of us and we are all too far apart.

  

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

Character

  

Maturity...is knowing what your limitations are...Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

  

Ting-a-ling mother fucker.

  

I can have oodles of charm when I want to.

  

She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.

Me

  

You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to do.

  

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

  

All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

  

There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore.

  

If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.

  

And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.

  

Round and round we spin, with feet of lead and wings of tin.

  

If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?

  

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.

Like

  

I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for--to find out how much a man could take without breaking.

Me

  

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.

  

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

  

We are what we imagine ourselves to be.

  

Until you die .. it's all life.

Life

  

To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.

  

The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody.

Me

  

Everything is nothing, with a twist.

  

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.

  

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

  

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

Life

  

A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.

  

Be patient, Ophelia. Love, Hamlet

  

In nonsense is strength

  

Self-taught, are you?" Julian Castle asked Newt. "Isn't everybody?" Newt inquired. "Very good answer.

  

Life is no way to treat an animal.

Life