Quotes from Kurt Vonnegut

If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn't read 'Democracy in America' by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

Never index your own book.

I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.

Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be.

People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.

Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side.

Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass.

Man is vile, and man makes nothing worth making, knows nothing worth knowing.

I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for--to find out how much a man could take without breaking.

Some automatic device clicked in her big brain, and her knees felt weak, and there was a chilly feeling in her stomach. She was in love with this man. They don't make memories like that anymore

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting.

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

Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God.

And we all vied, in saving face, to be the greatest student of human nature, the person with the quickest sense of humor.

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.

Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.

We are what we pretend to be so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.

One good thing about TV is, if you die violently, God forbid, on camera, you will not have died in vain because you will be great entertainment.

The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of a zipper on the fly of God Almighty.

God damn it, you've got to be kind.