Authors - Kurt Vonnegut
Brief Biography
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007) was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973) blend satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. As a citizen he was a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union and a critical leftist intellectual. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association. - Wikipedia
Quotes by Kurt VonnegutBrowse all of these
Quote 1285by Anonymous on 12/01/2011
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Quote 1323by Anonymous on 12/01/2011
Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
Quote 1760by Anonymous on 16/01/2011
History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.
Quote 1847by Anonymous on 16/01/2011
The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.
Quote 1957by Anonymous on 19/01/2011
Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.
Quote 2333by Anonymous on 28/01/2011
New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.
Quote 2606by Anonymous on 02/02/2011
The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.
Quote 3189by Anonymous on 05/02/2011
The worst thing that could happen to anybody, would be to not be used for anything by anybody.
Quote 3710by Anonymous on 09/02/2011
Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
Quote 3791by Anonymous on 10/02/2011
People have to talk about something just to keep their good voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.
Quote 3885by Anonymous on 12/02/2011
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
Quote 4426by Anonymous on 21/02/2011
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
Quote 4623by Anonymous on 25/02/2011
Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.
Quote 5077by Anonymous on 12/05/2011
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.
Quote 5283by Anonymous on 12/06/2011
All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.
Quote 6128by Anonymous on 14/09/2011
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.
Quote 6334by Anonymous on 18/09/2011
The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.
Quote 6407by Anonymous on 19/09/2011
I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'.
Quote 6505by Anonymous on 20/09/2011
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.
Quote 6747by Anonymous on 07/10/2011
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
Quote 6845by Anonymous on 11/10/2011
During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.
Quote 6912by Anonymous on 13/10/2011
Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.
Quote 7368by Anonymous on 06/11/2011
Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.
Quote 7468by Anonymous on 21/11/2011
1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
Quote 7514by Anonymous on 09/12/2011
Coincidences are a true paradox... on the one hand they seem to be the source of our greatest irrationalities--seeing causal connections when science tells us they aren't there. On the other hand, some of our greatest feats of scientific discovery depend on coincidences.
Quote 7812by Anonymous on 17/02/2012
All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.
Quote 9477by Anonymous on 01/08/2012
I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.
Quote 9848by Anonymous on 26/08/2012
Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.
Quote 10353by Anonymous on 28/09/2012
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
Quote 11564by Anonymous on 09/01/2013
If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
Quote 11650by Anonymous on 13/01/2013
Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
Quote 13158by Anonymous on 23/06/2013
How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
Quote 13749by Anonymous on 28/08/2013
Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.