Kurt Vonnegut Quotes - Page 4

There's only one rule that I know of, babies - God damn it, you've got to be kind.

I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind.

Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead.

I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.

Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho.

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.

I asked this heroic pet lover how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. Salvador Biagiani was philosophical. He said it sure beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Viet Nam War.

I say the same thing about the death of James Wait. "Oh, well - he wasn't going to write the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway.

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon].

Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference.

The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?"
It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period.
This is it: "Nothing.

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.

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

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

Trzymajcie się z dala od człowieka, który pracował w pocie czoła nad rozwiązaniem jakiejś zagadki, rozwiązał ją i stwierdził, że nie jest mądrzejszy niż przedtem - powiada Bokonon. - Przepełnia go bowiem mordercza pogarda do ludzi, którzy są równie głupi jak on, ale nie doszli do swojej głupoty równie ciężką pracą

So what indeed! The lesson I myself learned over and over again when teaching at the college and then the prison was the uselessness of information to most people, except as entertainment. If facts weren't funny or scary, or couldn't make you rich, the heck with them.

I learned the joke at the core of American self-improvement: knowledge was so much junk to be processed one way or another at great universities. The real treasure the great universities offered was a lifelong membership in a respected artificial extended family.

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.

When we passed a Catholic church, I recalled, he said, "You think your dad's a good chemist? They're turning soda crackers into meat in there. Can your dad do that?