17 Kurt Vonnegut Quotes on Humanity

Kurt Vonnegut quotes on humanity

4. Well, I've worried some about, you know, why write books ... why are we teaching people to write books when presidents and senators do not read them, and generals do not read them. And it's been the university experience that taught me that there is a very good reason, that you catch people before they become generals and presidents and so forth and you poison their minds with ... humanity, and however you want to poison their minds, it's presumably to encourage them to make a better world.

5. 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.

11. We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.

14. [When Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope] Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

31. A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

40. Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

48. 'You hate America, don't you?' she said. 'That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to the human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.'

57. Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'

67. Maybe God has let everybody who ever lived be reborn - so he or she can see how it ends. Even Pitecanthropus erectus and Australopithecus and Sinanthropus pekensis and the Neanderthalers are back on Earth - to see how it ends. They're all on Times Square - making change for peepshows. Or recruiting Marines.

92. We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.

93. Hey - guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?

107. I know that millions of dollars have been spent to produce this splendid graduating class, and that the main hope of your teachers was, once they got through with you, that you would no longer be superstitious. I'm sorry - I have to undo that now. I beg you to believe in the most ridiculous superstition of all: that humanity is at the center of the universe, the fulfiller or the frustrator of the grandest dreams of God Almighty. If you can believe that, and make others believe it, then there might be hope for us. Human beings might stop treating each other like garbage, might begin to treasure and protect each other instead. Then it might be all right to have babies again.

110. The arts put man at the center of the universe, whether he belongs there or not. Military science, on the other hand, treats man as garbage - and his children, and his cities, too. Military science is probably right about the contemptibility of man in the vastness of the universe. Still - I deny that contemptibility, and I beg you to deny it, through the creation of appreciation of art.

152. How embarrassing to be human.

179. What does 'A.D.' signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that. Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?

181. 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. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls' basketball. Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

213. While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one slider said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, 'I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.' Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it.