Top 500 Kurt Vonnegut Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 3 of 10

101. “Most kids can’t afford to go to Harvard to be misinformed.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

102. “Everything about life is a joke. Don’t you know that?”

— Kurt Vonnegut

103. “What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It’s a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

104. “Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs. So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

105. “If you really want to hurt your parents and you don’t have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

106. “Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

107. “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

108. “Smoking is the only honorable form of suicide.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

109. “Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

110. “Be patient, Ophelia. Love, Hamlet.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

112. “People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

113. “The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

114. “Do you think Arabs are dumb? They gave us our numbers. Try doing long division with Roman numerals.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

115. “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.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

116. “A nice thing about war-not that anything about war is nice, I guess-is that while it’s going on and you’re in it, you never worry about doing the right thing.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

117. “I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

118. “How embarrassing it is to be human.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

119. “But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

120. “The economy is a thoughtless weather system.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

121. “The moral of the story is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

122. “Never trust a survivor until you know how they survived.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

123. “Just because something feels better than anything else, that doesn’t mean it’s good for you.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

124. “I love you, because the love you gave me was the only love I’ve ever had, the only love I ever will have.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

125. “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

126. “In this world, you get what you pay for.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

127. “How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

128. “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.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

129. “If Jesus was alive today, we would kill him with lethal injection. I call that progress. We would have to kill him for the same reason he was killed the first time. His ideas are just too liberal.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

130. “To whom it may concern: It is springtime. It is late afternoon.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

131. “If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, ‘Kurt is up in heaven now.’ That’s my favorite joke.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

132. “What a bummer it is to be a human being.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

133. “Even as I speak, the very last polar bear may be dying of hunger on account of climate change, on account of us. And I sure miss the polar bears. Their babies are so warm and cuddly and trusting, just like ours.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

134. “Farewell, hello, farewell, hello.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

135. “A lack of seriousness has led to all sorts of wonderful insights.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

136. “Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules – and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

137. “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.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

138. “You can’t teach people to write well. Writing well is something God lets you do or declines to let you do.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

139. “The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

140. “She broke my heart. I didn’t like that much. But that was the price. In this world, you get what you pay for.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

141. “The youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

142. “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

143. “Goodbye blue Monday.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

144. “Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

146. “Please – a little less love, and a little more common decency.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

147. “Wake up, you idiots! Whatever made you think that money was so valuable?”

— Kurt Vonnegut

148. “Take care of the people, and God Almighty will take care of Himself.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

149. “He was a graduate of West Point, which is military academy that turns young men into homicidal maniacs for use in war.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

150. “The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.”

— Kurt Vonnegut