Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are.

As I spoke of anothers love and looked into the wide, blue windows of her soul, a rich, insistent yearning flooded my senses.--Tango

So I went to New York City to be born again. It was and remains easy for most Americans to go somewhere else and start anew. I wasnt like my parents. I didnt have any supposedly sacred piece of land or shoals of friends to leave behind. Nowhere has the number zero been of more philisophical value than in the United States.... and when the [train] plunged into a tunnel under New York City, with its lining of pipes and wires, I was out of the womb and into the birth canal.

Skyscraper National Park

The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people cant.

It couldnt have been gonorrhea, which never stops eating you up of its own accord. Why should it ever stop of its own accord? Its having such a nice time. Why call off the party? Look how healthy and happy the kids are.

He hadnt killed nearly as many people as I had. But then again, he hadnt had my advantage, which was the full cooperation of our Government.

It was The Gospel From Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space... [who] made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isnt well connected. So it goes. The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didnt look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought...: Oh, boy — they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: There are right people to lynch. Who? People not well connected. So it goes. The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels. So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldnt possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that too, since the Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was. And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of the Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!

I had made her so unhappy that she had developed a sense of humor. [-Rabo Karabekian]

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. Its hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Its round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, youve got a hundred years here. Theres only one rule that I know of, babies-God damn it, youve got to be kind.

Only one English word adequately describes his transformation of the islands from worthless to priceless: magical.

It is, in the imagination of combats fans, the divinely listless loveplay that follows the orgasm of victory. It is called mopping up.

They made a science out of people? she said. What a crazy science that must be.--Mr. Z

Bertrand Russell declared that, in case he met God, he would say to Him, Sir, you did not give us enough information. I would add to that, All the same, Sir, Im not persuaded that we did the best we could with the information we had. Toward the end there, anyway, we had tons of information.

‎The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

“Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the human situation is just too awful.”

“About the dumb Earthlings versus the smart Earthlings: I have known a fair number of scientists over the years, and I noticed they were often as bored by each other’s work as dumb people would be.”

“Notice when youre happy, and know when youve got enough. As for throwing money at problems: thats what money is for.”