As a writer, Kurt Vonnegut Quotes are one of my all-time favorites. Born on November 11, 1922, Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer who published 14 books over the span of 50 years of his career. He also wrote three short stories, five plays, and five fictions. He is recognized for his satirical and humorous writing. Some of his popular books include Mother Night, Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, and A Man Without a Country.
His creations Cat’s Cradle and The Sirens of Titan were nominated for the Hugo Award for best sci-fi or fantasy novel. Here is a list of 50 Kurt Vonnegut quotes.
Kurt Vonnegut quotes Love:
“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
“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 a pillar of salt. So it goes.”
“We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.”
“‘I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, “Please – a little less love, and a little more common decency.”
“If you can do no good, at least do no harm.”
“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.”
“And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It’s good for you.”
Kurt Vonnegut quotes about life:
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.
“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.”
“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
“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.”
“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.”
“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
“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.”
“Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
“How nice — to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”
“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”
“Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.”
“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.”
“All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
“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”.
Kurt Vonnegut quotes about death:
“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC”
“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.”
“And how should we behave during this Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should also stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don’t already have one.”
“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.”
“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”
Kurt Vonnegut quotes funny:
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
“Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.”
“The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected.”
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”
“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, “It might have been.”
“To be is to do – Socrates
To do is to be – Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do – Sinatra”
“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.”
“Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable.”
“When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”
“I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.”
“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”
“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’.”
Kurt Vonnegut quotes on writing:
“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
“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?”
“When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”
“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?”
Kurt Vonnegut quotes about Science:
“Science is magic that works.”
“Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the human situation is just too awful.”
Kurt Vonnegut quotes education:
“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.”
“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.”
If you are fond of satire writing, I recommend you to read books by Kurt Vonnegut. Our compilation of 50 Kurt Vonnegut quotes will make you fall in love with his writing style.
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