Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.

A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.

There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me is a miracle.

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.

[Books] were devices as crassly practical for storing or transmitting language, as the latest Silicon Valley miracles. But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our mind and souls, in a spiritual adventure.

I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.

I concluded that the best thing for me and for those around me was to want nothing, to be enthusiastic about nothing, to be as unmotivated as possible, in fact, so that I would never again hurt anyone.

Or theyll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics

There are plenty of good reasons for fights, I said, but no good reason to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Wheres evil? Its that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. Its that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.Its that part of an imbecile, I said, that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.

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.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

Sordid things, for the most part, are what make human beings, my father included, move. Thats what it is to be human, Im afraid.

And here, according to Trout, was the reason human beings could not reject ideas because they were bad: Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity. The ideas Earthlings held didnt matter for hundreds of thousands of years, since they couldnt do much about them anyway. Ideas might as well be badges as anything.They even had a saying about the futility of ideas: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. And then Earthlings discovered tools. Suddenly agreeing with friends could be a form of suicide or worse. But agreements went on, not for the sake of common sense or decency or self-preservation, but for friendliness.Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead. And even when they built computers to do some thinking for them, they designed them not so much for wisdom as for friendliness. So they were doomed. Homicidal beggars could ride.

I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.

I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays. But they are murdered children all the same.

Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who dont read much or think much -- who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could.

After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, Science has now known sin. And do you know what Father said? He said, What is sin?

That’s the attractive thing about war,” said Rosewater. “Absolutely everybody gets a little something.

The human beings also passed canteens, which guards would fill with water. When food came in, the human beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared.