is perhaps best known for his best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five, which was first published in 1969. Beyond that title, he had an extremely productive career, penning everything from plays to short stories to full-length nonfiction. Drawing on his experiences of war, life, and love, Vonnegut’s powerful messages were delivered so creatively—and often quite satirically—ensuring that they stood the test of time.
This assortment of Kurt Vonnegut quotes is just a glimpse of the gems found throughout the works of this great author.
Quotes About Life
Kurt Vonnegut was a master of creating outlandish plotlines for his novels and short stories. Often the protagonists find themselves in strange, unknown lands, and sometimes the characters aren’t even human. However, no matter how crazy the stories can be, they’re rich in metaphors for human life.
1. “Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
2. “Nobody's so damn well educated that you can't learn ninety percent of what he knows in six weeks. The other ten percent is decoration.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
3. “People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn’t own doodley-squat, so they couldn’t improve their surroundings. So they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
4. “The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.’” – Kurt Vonnegut,
5. “But his head no longer sheltered ideas of how things could be and should be on the planet, as opposed to how they really were. There was only one way for the Earth to be, he thought: the way it was.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
6. “The machines are to practically everybody what the white men were to the Indians. People are finding that, because of the way the machines are changing the world, more and more of their old values don't apply any more. People have no choice but to become second-rate machines themselves, or wards of the machines.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
7. “And the charming little cottage he'd taken as a symbol of the good life of a farmer was as irrelevant as a statue of Venus at the gate of a sewage-disposal plant.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
8. “But you find out quick enough that old friends are old friends, and nothing more—no wiser, no more help than anyone else.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
9. “Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
10. “How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
11. “The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time." – Kurt Vonnegut,
12. “That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
13. “So I hope that you will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, 'If this isn’t nice, what is?'” – Kurt Vonnegut,
14. “I am being so silly because I pity you so much. I pity all of us so much. Life is going to be very tough again, just as soon as this is over. And the most useful thought we can hold when all hell cuts loose again is that we are not members of different generations, as unlike, as some people would have us believe, as Eskimos and Australian Aborigines. We are all so close to each other in time that we should think of ourselves as brothers and sisters.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
15. “You know what else I think? I think life is no way to treat an animal, and not just people, but pigs and chickens, too. Life just hurts too much.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
16. “But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
17. “Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
18. “People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
19. “No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's. . .No damn cat, and no damn cradle.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
20. “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.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
21. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
22. “What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
23. “I admire anybody who finishes a work of art, no matter how awful it may be.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
24. “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.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
25. “Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, ‘There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamned lonely anymore.’” – Kurt Vonnegut,
26. “That’s what it was to be young—to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
27. “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,
28. “That is my principal objection to life, I think: It is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
29. “You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages–they haven't ended yet.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
30. “Egregious. Most people think that word means terrible or unheard of or unforgivable. It has a much more interesting story than that to tell. It means 'outside the herd.' Imagine that–thousands of people, outside the herd.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
31. “What passes for a culture in my head is really a bunch of commercials, and this is intolerable. It may be impossible to live without a culture.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
32. “Here is my understanding of the Universe and mankind’s place in it at the present time: The seeming curvature of the Universe is an illusion. The Universe is really as straight as a string, except for a loop at either end. The loops are microscopic. One tip of the string is forever vanishing.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
33. “My longer-range schemes have to do with providing all Americans with artificial extended families of a thousand members or more. Only when we have overcome loneliness can we begin to share wealth and work more fairly. I honestly believe that we will have those families by-and-by, and I hope they will become international.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
34. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
35. “In real life, as in Grand Opera, arias only make hopeless situations worse.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
36. “Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different!” – Kurt Vonnegut,
Quotes About War and Death
Vonnegut had much to say about life, but as a World War II veteran, he also had a lot to say about death. Many critics and fans claim that his works are some of literature’s most honest and understandable depictions of war and death, possibly due to his use of dark humor.
37. “Here is all she had to say about death: ‘Oh my, oh my.’” – Kurt Vonnegut,
38. “We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. 'My God, my God—', I said to myself. 'It's a Children's Crusade.'” – Kurt Vonnegut,
39. “On other days we have wars as horrible as any you've ever seen or read about. There isn't anything we can do about them, so we simply don't look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments—like today at the zoo.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
40. “The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could achieve their aim, war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well to...ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an air attack with conventional weapons.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
41. “Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”– Kurt Vonnegut,
42. “If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I've said... It is time for you to go home to your wives and children, and it is time for me to be dead for a little while—and then live again.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
43. “The nicest veterans... the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
44. “If I should ever die, again God forbid, I hope some of you will say, 'Kurt’s up in Heaven now.' That’s my favorite joke.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
45. “I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
46. “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,
47. “You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything—and I advise you to do the same.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
48. “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,
49. “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,
Quotes About Time
Many of Vonnegut’s most well-received works look into our misunderstandings of time. Slaughterhouse-Five, for example, is based on a time-traveler, and Timequake is about a world that must repeat 10 years of life on autopilot. Though these works are best understood when they are listened to in their entirety, these quotes may help give you an idea of the kinds of questions Vonnegut poses about time.
50. “This was when Billy first came unstuck in time. His attention began to swing grandly through the full arc of his life, passing into death, which was violet light. There wasn't anybody else there, or any thing. There was just violet light—and a hum.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
51. “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.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
52. “All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
53. “There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
54. “It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
55. “Actors know everything they are going to say and do, and how everything is going to come out in the end, for good or ill, when the curtain goes up on Act One, Scene One. Yet they have no choice but to behave as though the future were a mystery.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
56. “Listen, if it isn’t a timequake dragging us through knothole after knothole, it’s something else just as mean and powerful.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
57. “The timequake of 2001 was a cosmic charley horse in the sinews of Destiny. At what was in New York City 2:27 p.m. on February 13th of that year, the Universe suffered a crisis in self-confidence. Should it go on expanding indefinitely? What was the point?” – Kurt Vonnegut,
Quotes About Love
The majority of Vonnegut’s works are also centered around love. Many people would argue that he was a romantic at heart, and his ideas about love are complex and clever. They can resonate with both the brokenhearted and the wistfully in love.
58. “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
59. “Americans...are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
60. “It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
61. “I will tell you how to win love: wear nice clothing and smile all the time. Learn the words to all the latest songs.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
62. “Make love when you can. It’s good for you.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
63. “I do not propose to discuss my love life. I will say that I still can’t get over how women are shaped, and that I will go to my grave wanting to pet their butts and boobs. I will say, too, that lovemaking, if sincere, is one of the best ideas Satan put in the apple she gave to the serpent to give to Eve.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
64. “There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look. I am proof of that.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
65. “And how can you say a man had a good mind when he couldn't even bother to do anything when the best-hearted, most beautiful woman in the world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
66. “They were lovebirds. They entertained each other endlessly with little gifts: sights worth seeing out the plane window, amusing or instructive bits from things they read, random recollections of times gone by.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
67. “We Bokononists believe that it is impossible to be sole-to-sole with another person without loving the person, provided the feet of both persons are clean and nicely tended.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
68. “A man who wants all of somebody's love. That's very bad.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
69. “Actually, I am highly suspicious of love, and any honest biography of me would bear that out.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
70. “If somebody says, ‘I love you,’ to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but what the pistol-holder requires?” – Kurt Vonnegut,
71. “No matter what I was really, no matter what I really meant, uncritical love was what I needed.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
72. “I was sitting alone on a park bench in the sunshine that day, thinking of a fourth play that was beginning to write itself in my mind. It gave itself a title, which was ‘Das Reich der Zwei’—’Nation of Two.’ It was going to be about the love my wife and I had for each other. It was going to show how a pair of lovers in a world gone mad could survive by being loyal only to a nation composed of themselves—a nation of two.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
73. “The nation of two my Helga and I had—its territory, the territory we defended so jealously, didn’t go much beyond the bounds of our great double bed. Flat, tufted, springy little country, with my Helga and me for mountains. And, with nothing in my life making sense but love, what a student of geography I was!” – Kurt Vonnegut,
74. “My life is nothing but room for you.” – Kurt Vonnegut,
