This collection of Kurt Vonnegut quotes is only a sampling of the jewels discovered in this brilliant author’s writings.
Kurt Vonnegut was an American author, essayist, and novelist recognized for his sarcastic literary style and science-fiction themes. During his 20-year writing career, he produced five plays, three short pieces, five fiction works, and 14 books. Its finest works include Cat’s Cradle, Player Piano, and Breakfast of Champions. Slaughterhouse-five, a darkly humorous novel, was the best-seller of 1969. The creator of memorable characters was also a bit of a character in his own right. Vonnegut was a counterculture icon who created excellent books, won countless hearts, and did some strange things. In the early 1940s, he received his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University. After that, he joined the army of the United States. He was sent to Carnegie Mellon University to study engineering by the army.
Vonnegut was captured in a military prison after fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. He resumed his professional writing career after his discharge. Kurt scored his works to assess his writing abilities, which is unusual. Vonnegut’s revolutionary ideals, filthy language, and disagreeable scenario in Slaughterhouse-five sparked various debates in the society since he was a staunch supporter of the anti-censorship movement. His book was contested in a number of regions and was eventually banned. On his 77th birthday, astronomer Charles W. Juels— a discoverer of numerous asteroids— named an asteroid after Vonnegut.
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.
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.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
The purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
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True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
There is love enough in this world for everybody if people will just look.
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you differently.
Nobody’s so damn well educated that you can’t learn ninety percent of what he knows in six weeks. The other ten percent is decoration.
There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes Education
In those days great teachers at Shortridge (High School) were celebrities. I would look up to them. – Kurt Vonnegut
Educating a beautiful woman is like pouring honey into a fine Swiss watch everything stops. – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
We used to have superb public schools. I guess we don’t anymore, but, boy, the public schools were really something and I am a product of those in Indianapolis. – Kurt Vonnegut
High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of. – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
One thing I hate about school committees today is that they cut arts programs out of the curriculum because they say the arts aren’t a way to make a living. – Kurt Vonnegut
New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become. – Kurt Vonnegut
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. – Kurt Vonnegut
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We could have saved the earth, but we were too damned cheap. – Kurt Vonnegut
We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different. – Kurt Vonnegut
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. – Kurt Vonnegut
What good is a planet called Earth, after all, if you own no land? – Kurt Vonnegut
We’re terrible animals. I think that the Earth’s immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well as it should. – Kurt Vonnegut
Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum. – Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes about Love
The purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. – Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?
..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. – Kurt Vonnegut
It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love. – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
I will tell you how to win love: wear nice clothing and smile all the time. Learn the words to all the latest songs. – Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?
Make love when you can. It’s good for you. – Kurt Vonnegut
There is love enough in this world for everybody if people will just look. I am proof of that. – Kurt Vonnegut
And how can you say a man had a good mind when he couldn’t even bother to do anything when the best-hearted, most beautiful woman in the world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding. – Kurt Vonnegut
They were lovebirds. They entertained each other endlessly with little gifts: sights worth seeing out the plane window, amusing or instructive bits from things they read, random recollections of times gone by. – Kurt Vonnegut
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We Bokononists believe that it is impossible to be sole-to-sole with another person without loving the person, provided the feet of both persons are clean and nicely tended. – Kurt Vonnegut
A man who wants all of somebody’s love. That’s very bad. – Kurt Vonnegut
Actually, I am highly suspicious of love, and any honest biography of me would bear that out. – Kurt Vonnegut
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 what the pistol-holder requires? – Kurt Vonnegut
No matter what I was really, no matter what I really meant, uncritical love was what I needed. – Kurt Vonnegut
I was sitting alone on a park bench in the sunshine that day, thinking of a fourth play that was beginning to write itself in my mind. It gave itself a title, which was ‘Das Reich der Zwei’—’ Nation of Two.’ It was going to be about the love my wife and I had for each other. It was going to show how a pair of lovers in a world gone mad could survive by being loyal only to a nation composed of themselves—a nation of two. – Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
The nation of two my Helga and I had—its territory, the territory we defended so jealously, didn’t go much beyond the bounds of our great double bed. A flat, tufted, springy little country, with my Helga and me for mountains. And, with nothing in my life making sense but love, what a student of geography I was! – Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
My life is nothing but room for you. – Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes on Writing
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.
If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us and that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
Don’t you think that’s the main reason people find [writing] so difficult? If they can write complete sentences and can use a dictionary, isn’t that the only reason they find writing hard: they don’t know or care about anything?
I like Utopian talk, speculation about what our planet should be, and anger about what our planet is.
I think writers are the most important members of society, not just potentially but actually. Good writers must have and stand by their own ideas.
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I’m simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don’t think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don’t have that feeling. I don’t have that sort of control. I’m simply becoming. I’m startled that I became a writer.
The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly should be the same abbreviation, which I now write largely because I feel like it, which is this one:
Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.
When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away.
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.
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.
Funny Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
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.
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A universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.
Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, It might have been.
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I prefer to laugh since there is less cleaning to do afterward.
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you differently.
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 in 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 Death
Here is all she had to say about death: ‘Oh my, oh my.’ – Kurt Vonnegut
We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. ‘My God, my God—’, I said to myself. ‘It’s a Children’s Crusade.’ – Kurt Vonnegut
On other days we have wars as horrible as any you’ve ever seen or read about. There isn’t anything we can do about them, so we simply don’t look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments—like today at the zoo. – Kurt Vonnegut
The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could achieve their aim, the war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well to…ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an air attack with conventional weapons. – Kurt Vonnegut
Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves. – Kurt Vonnegut
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If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I’ve said… It is time for you to go home to your wives and children, and it is time for me to be dead for a little while—and then live again. – Kurt Vonnegut
The nicest veterans… the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who’d really fought. – Kurt Vonnegut
If I should ever die, again God forbid, I hope some of you will say, ‘Kurt’s up in Heaven now.’ That’s my favorite joke. – Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?
I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other. – Kurt Vonnegut
Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns. – Kurt Vonnegut
You’ll forget it when you’re dead, and so will I. When I’m dead, I’m going to forget everything—and I advise you to do the same. – Kurt Vonnegut
We cannot get rid of mankind’s fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true. I give you a holy word: Disarm. – Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes Creativity
Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow – whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four-line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don’t show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as possibly. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.
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.’
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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.
Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, It might have been.
We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis — at any time of night or day.
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.
We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
