The Best Kurt Vonnegut quotes

They do not love one another because they do not love themselves. — Kurt Vonnegut

Uncritical love is the only real treasure. — Kurt Vonnegut

We’re not too young for love, just too young for about everything there is that goes with love. — Kurt Vonnegut

Please–a little less love, and a little more common decency. — Kurt Vonnegut

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look. — Kurt Vonnegut

And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It’s good for you. — Kurt Vonnegut

The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. — Kurt Vonnegut

Tis better to have love and lust Than to let our apparatus rust. — Kurt Vonnegut

Our aim is to make the world more beautiful than it was when we came into it. It can be done. You can do it––love yourself — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous. — Kurt Vonnegut

No young person on earth is so excellent in all respects as to need no uncritical love. — Kurt Vonnegut

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. — Kurt Vonnegut

Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it. — Kurt Vonnegut

I love you, because the love you gave me was the only love I’ve ever had, the only love I ever will have. — Kurt Vonnegut

Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are. — Kurt Vonnegut

What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do. — Kurt Vonnegut

That’s what is was to be young–to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do. — Kurt Vonnegut

You were sick, but now you’re well again, and there’s work to do. — Kurt Vonnegut

Most things in this world don´t work, aspirin do. — Kurt Vonnegut

Science is magic that works. — Kurt Vonnegut

Nothing is generous. New knowledge is a valuable commodity. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we are. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I keep losing and regaining my equilibrium, which is the basic plot of all popular fiction. And I myself am a work of fiction. — Kurt Vonnegut

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. the more truth we have to work with, the richer we become. — Kurt Vonnegut

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. — Kurt Vonnegut

I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. — Kurt Vonnegut

Bill Gates says, ‘Wait till you can see what your computer can become.’ But it’s you who should be doing the becoming. What you can become is the miracle you were born to work–not the damn fool computer. — Kurt Vonnegut

I don’t know what anybody else in the world would want to thank America for, but man, it [jazz] works. What I like about it–and what public health people ought to like about it–it’s safe sex. — Kurt Vonnegut

In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. — Kurt Vonnegut

Kar.a.bek.i.an (n.); (from Rabo Karabekian, U.S. 20th Cent. painter). Fiasco in which a person causes total destruction of own work and reputation through stupidity, carelessness or both. — Kurt Vonnegut

What a bummer it is to be a human being. — Kurt Vonnegut

How embarrassing to be human. — Kurt Vonnegut

Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that’s not saying much. — Kurt Vonnegut

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that? — Kurt Vonnegut

It’s the emptiest and yet the fullest of all human messages: ‘Good–bye. — Kurt Vonnegut

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. — Kurt Vonnegut

If I am ever put to death on the hook, expect a very human performance. — Kurt Vonnegut

Laughter or crying is what a human being does when there’s nothing else he can do. — Kurt Vonnegut

The secret to success in any human endeavor is total concentration. — Kurt Vonnegut

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

Evolution is a mistake. Humans are a mistake. We’ve destroyed our planet. — Kurt Vonnegut

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival. — Kurt Vonnegut

Thinking doesn’t seem to help very much. The human brain is too high–powered to have many practical uses in this particular universe. — Kurt Vonnegut

Paul Slazinger says, incidentally, that the human condition can be summed up in just one word, and this is the word: Embarrassment. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

If it weren’t for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn’t want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake. — Kurt Vonnegut

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. — Kurt Vonnegut

Take life seriously but none of the people in it. — Kurt Vonnegut

Life, by definition, is never still. — Kurt Vonnegut

How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is. — Kurt Vonnegut

No good at life, but very funny sometimes with the commentary. — Kurt Vonnegut

To the as–yet–unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life. — Kurt Vonnegut

Oh, God–the lives people try to lead. Oh, God–what a world they try to lead them in. — Kurt Vonnegut

What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on? — Kurt Vonnegut

Everything about life is a joke. Don’t you know that? — Kurt Vonnegut

It’s a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life. — Kurt Vonnegut

In the era of big brains, life stories could end up any which way. Look at mine. — Kurt Vonnegut

My god–life! who can understand eve one little minute of it? ‘don’t try’ he said ‘just pretend you understand. — Kurt Vonnegut

God never wrote a good play in his life. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Scum of the Earth as some may be in their daily lives, they can all be saints in emergencies. — Kurt Vonnegut

The function of the artist is to make people like life better than they have before. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Life goes on–and a fool and his self respect are soon parted… — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Enjoy the little things in life because one day you`ll look back and realize they were the big things. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It’s just a hell of a time to be alive. — Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

You say very funny things. I am sorry I can’t say funny things back. This is not a funny time for me. — Kurt Vonnegut

Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. — Kurt Vonnegut

There was a time when I could vote for economic justice, and I can’t anymore. — Kurt Vonnegut

Just in the nick of time they realized that it was their own habitat they were wrecking––that they weren’t merely visitors. — Kurt Vonnegut

It is time for me to be dead for a little while–and then live again. — Kurt Vonnegut

There were lots of things to stop and see–and then it was time to go, always time to go. — Kurt Vonnegut

The two prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck. — Kurt Vonnegut

A pissant does his best to make you feel like a boob all the time. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think. — Kurt Vonnegut

May I ask you a highly personal question?’ ‘It’s what life does all the time. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

My ancestors came over from Germany about the time of the Civil War and one of them lost a leg and went back to Germany. — Kurt Vonnegut

Trust a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time. — Kurt Vonnegut

Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. — Kurt Vonnegut

Any man can call time out but no man can say how long the time will be out. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It’s a small world.’ . . . ‘When you put it in a cemetery it is. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren. — Kurt Vonnegut

There’s almost nothing like native Midwesterner anywhere else in the world, except in Asia. They’re miracles all in themselves. — Kurt Vonnegut

The world is full of people who are very clever at seeming much smarter than they really are. — Kurt Vonnegut

In this world, you get what you pay for. — Kurt Vonnegut

His mother understood my illness immediately, that it was my world rather than myself that was diseased. — Kurt Vonnegut

I hope that we’ll meet again in a world of peace and freedom in the taxi cab if the accident will. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

People would be surprised if they knew how much in this world was due to prayers. — Kurt Vonnegut

I wanted all things to seem to make some sense, So we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense. And I made up lies, so they all fit nice, and I made this sad world a paradise — Kurt Vonnegut

He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way. — Kurt Vonnegut

Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise. — Kurt Vonnegut

It shook up Trout to realize that even he could bring evil into the world–in the form of bad ideas. — Kurt Vonnegut

One of the things I’m going to say out there is how grateful I am–and how grateful the world is–for the tremendous gift of the black people, of jazz. — Kurt Vonnegut

The reason we write fiction is because it’s so much easier to exist spending part of each day in an imaginary world. — Kurt Vonnegut

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead. — Kurt Vonnegut

What do my science fiction stories have in common with pornography? Fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world, I’m told. — Kurt Vonnegut

I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That’s why I served in World War II, and that’s why I wrote books. — Kurt Vonnegut

Just because something feels better than anything else, that doesn’t mean it’s good for you. — Kurt Vonnegut

People like to feel entitled, whether they’re actually entitled or not. — Kurt Vonnegut

I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel better, even if it’s unscientific. No scientist worthy of the name could say such a thing. — Kurt Vonnegut

How nice––to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

People] want to feel superior, so they imagine we’re Bible thumpers and uneducated and all that. — Kurt Vonnegut

Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone. — Kurt Vonnegut

Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. — Kurt Vonnegut

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. — Kurt Vonnegut

About astrology and palmistry: They are good because they make people feel vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.