"No moral value is greater than humanity."
Read quote
4 likes
Quote collection
Kurt Vonnegut quotes (page 28 of 49)
978 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
Read quote
4 likes
"1. Find a subject you care about. 2. Do not ramble, though. 3. Keep it simple. 4. Have the guts to cut. 5. Sound like yourself. 6. Say what you mean to say. 7. Pity the readers."
Read quote
4 likes
"The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art."
Read quote
4 likes
"The big show is inside my head."
Read quote
4 likes
"Vonnegut could not help looking back, despite the danger of being turned metaphorically into a pillar of salt, into am emblem of the death that comes to those who cannot let go of the past"
Read quote
4 likes
"I pity the Jews trying to get through life with only half a Bible. That's like trying to get from here to San Francisco with a road map that stops at Dubuque, Iowa."
Read quote
4 likes
"I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. 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. Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’ I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war."
Read quote
4 likes
"Educate yourself, welcome life's messiness, read Chekhov, avoid becoming an architect at all costs."
Read quote
4 likes
"Some automatic device clicked in her big brain, and her knees felt weak, and there was a chilly feeling in her stomach. She was in love with this man. They don't make memories like that anymore"
Read quote
4 likes
"If you make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper, what is that but a practical joke? All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again."
Read quote
4 likes
"God Almighty Himself must have been hilarious when human beings so mingled iron and water and fire as to make a railroad train!"
Read quote
4 likes
"I myself grew up when radio was very important. I'd come home from school and turn on the radio. There were funny comedians and wonderful music, and there were plays. I used to pass time with radio."
Read quote
4 likes
"My ancestors were all Freethinkers, formerly Catholics. It was science and Darwin, in particular, that made them decide, as educated people, which they were, that the priest, nice as he was, didn't know what he was talking about."
Read quote
4 likes
"You have never seen greatness in a Presidency; I have. It was a rich kid who you would think had every reason to be a horse's ass - Franklin Roosevelt. He was humane and wise and resourceful. He was called a traitor to his class. With George Bush, that charge would never stick."
Read quote
4 likes
"Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are."
Read quote
4 likes
"Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir." he read, "You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next - and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. You are pooped and demoralized, " read Dwayne. "Why wouldn't you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable."
Read quote
3 likes
"People are only animals, but special animals. Every animal has fought and killed to survive, even before the dinosaurs. We're the only ones that do it for fun. That's why I don't know about Darwinism. Supposedly evolution and natural selection are all about survival, but we haven't gotten smarter over the years, only more dangerous."
Read quote
3 likes
"The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines?"
Read quote
3 likes
"I've got at least one tiny corner of the universe I can make just the way I want it."
Read quote
3 likes