“Be aware of this truth that the people on this earth could be joyous, if only they would live rationally, and if they would contribute mutually to each others’ welfare.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
“Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
“My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die. There is evil for you.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick
“We cannot get rid of mankind's fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true. I give you a holy word: Disarm.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick
"We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned lazy and cheap."
Kurt Vonnegut
"There is no reason why good can not triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia."
Kurt Vonnegut
"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."
Kurt Vonnegut
"Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet - the only one in the whole Milky Way - with a century of
transportation whoopee."
Kurt Vonnegut
"What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law."​
Kurt Vonnegut
"I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours."
Kurt Vonnegut
"During most of my freelancing, I made what I would have made in charge of the cafeteria at a pretty good junior-high school."
Kurt Vonnegut
"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."
Kurt Vonnegut
"I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us."
Kurt Vonnegut
"Back in my days as a chemistry student, I used to be quite a technocrat. I was firmly convinced that scientists would have cornered God and photographed Him in color by 1951."
Kurt Vonnegut
"The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large."