"Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead."
Read quote
66 likes
Quote collection
Kurt Vonnegut quotes (page 2 of 49)
978 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow."
Read quote
66 likes
"We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should."
Read quote
64 likes
"Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone."
Read quote
63 likes
"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."
Read quote
63 likes
"I don't know what's going on, and I'm probably not smart enough to understand if somebody was to explain it to me. All I know is we're being tested somehow, by somebody or some thing a whole lot smarter than us, and all I can do is be friendly and keep calm and try and have a nice time till it's over."
Read quote
63 likes
"There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look."
Read quote
62 likes
"Like all real heroes, Charley had a fatal flaw. He refused to believe that he had gonorrhea, whereas the truth was that he did."
Read quote
61 likes
"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
Read quote
58 likes
"Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end, And our God will take things back that He to us did lend. And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God, Why just go ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod."
Read quote
58 likes
"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."
Read quote
58 likes
"Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery."
Read quote
56 likes
"It's a terrible waste to be happy and not notice it."
Read quote
56 likes
"The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, "There's a Chaplain who never visited the front."
Read quote
55 likes
"The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion of Jesus: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's." Bokonon's paraphrase was this: "Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on."
Read quote
55 likes
"Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic."
Read quote
55 likes
"There's a Chaplain who never visited the front."
Read quote
55 likes
"Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done."
Read quote
53 likes
"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable."
Read quote
52 likes
"I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours."
Read quote
52 likes