Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his distinctive and often satirical style.
His quotes reflect his unique worldview, blending dark humor, social commentary, and philosophical insights.
Here are some characteristics commonly found in Kurt Vonnegut quotes:
- Satire and Irony: Vonnegut frequently used satire and irony to critique various aspects of society, including politics, war, and human behavior. His quotes often have a sardonic tone, aiming to expose the absurdity or hypocrisy of certain situations.
- Dark Humor: Vonnegut’s writing often incorporates dark humor as a coping mechanism in the face of the world’s problems. His quotes can be both funny and thought-provoking, combining laughter with a deeper reflection on the human condition.
- Social Commentary: Vonnegut was known for his keen observations on society. His quotes often touch on topics like war, technology, consumerism, and the dehumanizing effects of modern civilization. He used his words to question societal norms and shed light on the consequences of certain cultural values.
- Existentialism and Absurdity: Vonnegut frequently explored existential themes, questioning the meaning and purpose of human existence. His quotes can highlight the absurdity of life and the struggles individuals face in a chaotic world. He often presented a bleak yet honest perspective on the human experience.
- Simplicity and Clarity: Despite tackling complex subjects, Vonnegut had a knack for conveying profound ideas with simplicity and clarity. His quotes are often concise, cutting through the noise to deliver a powerful message in a straightforward manner.
- Wisdom and Reflection: Vonnegut’s quotes often reveal a depth of wisdom and reflection. They invite readers to ponder the nature of life, morality, and the choices we make. His words often carry a sense of resignation and acceptance, emphasizing the importance of empathy, compassion, and human connection.
- Nonconformity and Individualism: Vonnegut celebrated nonconformity and individuality in his writings. His quotes encourage readers to embrace their uniqueness, question authority, and challenge societal norms. He often championed the underdog and criticized oppressive systems.
Overall, Kurt Vonnegut’s quotes offer a mix of humor, social criticism, and existential musings.
They provide a fresh perspective on the human condition, urging readers to reflect on the world around them and consider alternative ways of living and thinking.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
Here are some quotes from Kurt Vonnegut:
- “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
- “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
- “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.'”
- “We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.”
- “So it goes.”
- “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘It might have been.'”
- “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
- “Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”
- “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
- “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
- “All this happened, more or less.”
- “We could have saved the Earth, but we were too damned cheap.”
- “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
- “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”
- “I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.”
- “Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
- “We must be careful what we pretend to be.”
- “Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.”
- “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”
- “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
- “I asked the guide who gives the tour through the children’s ward what the most common problem with the children was. He said that the children had bad dreams and that once or twice a night a child woke up screaming with fright. I asked how the children might be helped to have better dreams, and he replied, ‘The children must be made to feel safe, and the children must be told, over and over, that their dreams and their stories are listened to and understood here; at night here in the Children’s Ward, we will listen and understand and help each other, and nothing bad is going to happen to any of us, even if we do have bad dreams. Here in the Children’s Ward, we are all safe together.”
- “Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God d— it, you’ve got to be kind.”
- “Science is magic that works.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “If you can do no good, at least do no harm.”
- “I love you, son, but I don’t trust you.”
- “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.”
- “I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”
- “Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.”
- “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
- “If you want to really hurt you 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 you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
- “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.”
- “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
- “Being a humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
- “People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.”
- “All time is 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, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”
- “The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal.”
- “We had trouble understanding how what is happening to us could be important to anyone else. It had little to do with absolute truth or the ordinary application of logic.”
- “Nobody was very surprised when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level where savage things grow.”
- “If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.”
- “I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.”
- “In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness. And God said, ‘Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.’ And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. ‘What is the purpose of all this?’ he asked politely. ‘Everything must have a purpose?’ asked God. ‘Certainly,’ said man. ‘Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,’ said God. And He went away.”
- “I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.”
- “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”
- “The function of the artist is to make people like life better than they have before.”
- “Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”
- “If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.”
- “I don’t know what it is about Hoosiers, but wherever you go, there is always a Hoosier doing something very important there.”
- “We must be careful what we pretend to be.”
- “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.”
- “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 you can do no good, at least do no harm.”
- “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘It might have been.'”
- “We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do, what we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must; until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.”
- “Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”
- “There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.”
- “And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
Inspirational Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
Inspirational Kurt Vonnegut Quotes:
- “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
- “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.'”
- “We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
- “Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.”
- “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
- “So it goes.”
- “Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
- “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”
- “The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.”
- “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”
Short Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
Short Kurt Vonnegut Quotes:
- “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.”
- “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”
- “And so it goes.”
- “So it goes.”
- “Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”
- “We must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
- “Listen: We are all time machines.”
- “All this happened, more or less.”
- “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
- “If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, ‘Kurt is up in heaven now.’ That’s my favorite joke.”
Funny Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
Funny Kurt Vonnegut Quotes:
- “I asked him what humans were supposed to do now that there were no wars to fight, and he said, ‘Make no mistake about it, they will find wars.'”
- “So it goes.”
- “Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?'”
- “Of course, it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable.”
- “I can have oodles of charm when I want to.”
- “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.”
- “Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
- “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.”
- “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
- “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.”
Famous Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
Famous Kurt Vonnegut Quotes:
- “And so it goes.”
- “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.”
- “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.'”
- “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘It might have been.'”
- “So it goes.”
- “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
- “We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
- “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
- “Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
Deep Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
Deep Kurt Vonnegut Quotes:
- “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
- “Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
- “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
- “And so it goes.”
- “We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
- “Listen: We are all time machines.”
- “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”
- “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”
- “Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
- “The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.”
Conclusion
Kurt Vonnegut’s quotes are a reflection of his unique perspective on life, society, and the human condition.
Through his distinctive blend of satire, dark humor, and profound insight, Vonnegut’s words provoke thought, challenge conventions, and offer a fresh lens through which to view the world.
His quotes encompass themes of existentialism, social commentary, individualism, and the importance of empathy and kindness.
With simplicity and clarity, Vonnegut’s quotes encourage us to question authority, embrace our uniqueness, and find meaning in a chaotic world.
His words continue to resonate, reminding us to laugh, to reflect, and to strive for a more humane and compassionate existence.
