Kurt Vonnegut

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. (often attributed to Vonnegut, but it's by Mary Schmich)
It can make quite a difference not just to you but to humanity: the sort of boss you choose, whose dreams you help come true.
Do one thing every day that scares you. (often attributed to Vonnegut, but it's by Mary Schmich)
You think the ancient Romans were smart? Look at how dumb their numbers were. One theory of why they declined and fell is that their plumbing was lead. Lead poisoning makes people stupid and lazy. What’s your excuse?
People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
There is no reason why good cannot 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.
We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.
Those who dream of each other should fall asleep together.
Television is like a rotten teacher in high school, except it’s everybody’s teacher.
Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. 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. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend. Just do it. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
If Jesus were alive today, we would kill him with lethal injection. I call that progress. We would have to kill him for the same reason he was killed the first time. His ideas are just too liberal.
A saint is a person who behaves decently in an indecent society.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.
If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts.
Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself. (often attributed to Vonnegut, but it's by Mary Schmich)
Eliza and I believed then what I believe even now: that life can be painless, provided that there is sufficient peacefulness for a dozen or so rituals to be repeated simply endlessly.
The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it.
Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency.
People appreciate you most fully when they lay flowers on your grave.
We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one. Of that I am sure.
I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.
Everywhere and always, justice systems do not care at all whether justice is achieved. As with the gladiators of the Romans, justice systems are a way for unjust governments — and there are no other governments — to be terribly entertaining when the lives of quite real people are at stake.
Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.
If you can’t write clearly, you probably don’t think nearly as well as you think you do.
If self-respect breaks a leg, the leg can never heal. Its owner has to shoot it.
Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum.
The good Earth — we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.
We cannot get rid of mankind’s fleetingly evil wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true. I give you a holy word: DISARM.
When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went wow. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at any of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.

last edited: 2026-08-25 13:32