Top 500 Kurt Vonnegut Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

202. “When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

203. “A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

204. “There were lots of things to stop and see-and then it was time to go, always time to go.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

205. “There is no WHY, since the moment simply is, and since all of us are simply trapped in the moment, like bugs in Amber.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

206. “If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

207. “As stupid and vicious as men are, this is a lovely day.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

208. “I urge you to please notice when you are happy.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

209. “What do my science fiction stories have in common with pornography? Fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world, I’m told.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

210. “One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

211. “Reading a novel, War and Peace for example, is no Catnap. Because a novel is so long, reading one is like being married forever to somebody nobody knows or cares about.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

Featured in: Reading Quotes

212. “All people are insane. They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

213. “Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

214. “Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

215. “You can’t just eat good food. You’ve got to talk about it too. And you’ve got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

216. “Extenuating circumstance to be mentioned on Judgment Day: We never asked to be born in the first place.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

217. “The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

218. “To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

219. “The hopes and fears of all our years are here with us tonight.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

220. “I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

221. “Earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

222. “It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

223. “My god-life! who can understand eve one little minute of it? ‘don’t try’ he said ’just pretend you understand.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

224. “Cigarettes are a classy way to commit suiside.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

225. “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

226. “In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

227. “That’s one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

228. “If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I’m grateful that so many of those moments are nice.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

229. “Make love when you can. It’s good for you.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

230. “Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

231. “The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

232. “Some jerk infected the Internet with an outright lie. It shows how easy it is to do and how credulous people are.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

233. “We are what we imagine ourselves to be.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

234. “Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn’t compete successfully with poets.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

235. “I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

236. “Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

237. “The surface of Earth heaved and seethed in fecund restlessness. Earth was most fertile where the most death was.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

238. “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

239. “Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to conquer the universe.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

240. “Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

241. “The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

242. “What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too. And even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

243. “I beg you to believe the most ridiculous superstition of all: that humanity is at the center of the universe, the fulfiller or frustrateor of the grandest dreams of God Almighty.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

244. “People say there are no atheists in foxholes. A lot of people think this is a good argument against atheism. Personally, I think it’s a much better argument against foxholes.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

245. “It’s an astonishing skill that people can read, and read well. Very few people can read well. For instance, I have to be very careful with irony, saying something while meaning the exact opposite.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

246. “Hitler at the end thought that he himself was one more casualty in the war.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

247. “It pains me even now, even a million years later, to write about such human misbehaviour. A million years later, I feel like apologizing for the human race. That’s all I can say.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

248. “One good thing about TV is, if you die violently, God forbid, on camera, you will not have died in vain because you will be great entertainment.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

249. “All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

250. “Our government’s got a war on drugs. That’s certainly better then no drugs at all.”

— Kurt Vonnegut