Top 500 Kurt Vonnegut Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Smoking is the only honorable form of suicide.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

104. “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

105. “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

106. “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

107. “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

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

110. “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

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

112. “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

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

116. “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

117. “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

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

120. “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

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— 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. “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

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

135. “No art is possible without a dance with death.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

137. “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

138. “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

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

140. “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

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. “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

143. “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

144. “Goodbye blue Monday.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

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

— Kurt Vonnegut

150. “Those who live by electronics die by electronics. Sic semper tyrannis.”

— Kurt Vonnegut