I pity the Jews trying to get through life with only half a Bible. That's like trying to get from here to San Francisco with a road map that stops at Dubuque, Iowa. Kurt Vonnegut More Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut More Quotes From Kurt Vonnegut Oh, a lion hunter in the jungle dark, And a sleeping drunkard up in central park, and a Chinese dentist and a British queen All fit together in the same machine. Nice, nice, such very different people in the same device! Kurt Vonnegut queens nice sleep Do I resent rich people? No. The best or worst I can do is notice them. I agree with the great Socialist writer George Orwell, who felt that rich people were poor people with money. Kurt Vonnegut rich poor people all that has changed, in my opinion, is that, thanks to television, we can hide a great depression. we may even be hiding a third world war Kurt Vonnegut war television world The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines? Kurt Vonnegut country lying past It shook up Trout to realize that even he could bring evil into the world — in the form of bad ideas. Kurt Vonnegut trout evil ideas I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak. Kurt Vonnegut mind memorable thinking Anyone unable to understand how useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either. Kurt Vonnegut cradle book lying Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones. Kurt Vonnegut space sea science I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair. Kurt Vonnegut gutters punishment looks If God were alive today, He'd be an atheist. Kurt Vonnegut alive atheist today She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all. Kurt Vonnegut ungrateful mother giving A lover's a liar, To himself he lies, The truthful are loveless, Like oysters their eyes! Kurt Vonnegut eye liars lying Man is vile, and man makes nothing worth making, knows nothing worth knowing. Kurt Vonnegut cradle knowing men See the cat? See the cradle? Kurt Vonnegut cats-cradle cradle cat What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too. And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death. Kurt Vonnegut glaciers war believe How embarrassing to be human. Kurt Vonnegut embarrassing embarrassment clever I am of course a skeptic about the divinity of Christ and a scorner of the notion that there is a God who cares about how we are or what we do. ... Religious skeptics often become very bitter towards the end, as did Mark Twain. ... I know why I will become bitter. I will finally realize that I have had it right all along: that I will not see God, that there is no heaven or Judgement Day. Kurt Vonnegut judgement religious heaven The trouble with God isn't that He so seldom makes Himself known to us... He's holding you and me and everybody else by the scruff of the neck practically _constantly... Contentedly adrift in the cosmos, were you?... That is a perfect description of a non-epiphany, that rarest of moments, when God Almighty lets go of the scruff of your neck and lets you be human for a little while. Kurt Vonnegut perfect letting-go religion If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is. Kurt Vonnegut stories ordinary years The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one: ETC. Kurt Vonnegut stories writing people
