The quotations of

Kurt Vonnegut

American author

1922–2007

45 quotes, most often on Comedy, Life & Death and Education. Part of the Writers collection.

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.
Playboy interview (1973)
- Happiness
Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power.
Cold Turkey (2004)
- Power
There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — “God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
- Advice
- Morality
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.
A Man Without a Country (2005)
- Art
Belief is nearly the whole of the Universe, whether based on truth or not.
Bluebeard (1987), p. 144
- Faith
- Truth & Lies
All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
- Time
I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I’m dead.
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
- Atheism
- Morality
Maybe God has let everybody who ever lived be reborn — so he or she can see how it ends.
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970), “Dr. Norbert Woodley”
- God
High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.
Introduction to Our Time Is Now: Notes From the High School Underground, John Birmingham, ed. (1970)
- America
- Education
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.
Hocus Pocus (1990)
- Intelligence
- Pride
I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
“Knowing What’s Nice”, an essay from In These Times (2003)
- Advice
- Happiness
I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.
Player Piano (1952), Chapter 9 (p. 86)
- Risk
I don’t know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves “Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.”
A Man Without a Country (2005)
- Comedy
- Religion
I used to think that science would save us, and science certainly tried. But we can’t stand any more tremendous explosions, either for or against democracy.
Bennington College address (1970)
- Science
- War & Peace
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.
Hocus Pocus (1990)
- Christianity
- Good & Evil

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