11 Kurt Vonnegut Quotes on Power

Kurt Vonnegut quotes on power

64. Derby described the incredible artificial weather that Earthlings sometimes create for other Earthlings when they don't want those other Earthlings to inhabit Earth any more.

74. When I was a naive young recruit in Spain, I used to wonder why soldiers bayoneted oil paintings, shot the noses off statues and defecated into grand pianos. I now understand: it was to teach civilians the deepest sort of respect for men in uniform - uncontrollable fear.

99. The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

114. Eliza and I composed a precocious critique of the Constitution of the United States of America ... We argued that is was as good a scheme for misery as any, since its success in keeping the common people reasonably happy and proud depended on the strength of the people themselves - and yet it prescribed no practical machinery which would tend to make the people, as opposed to their elected representatives, strong. We said it was possible that the framers of the Constitution were blind to the beauty of persons who were without great wealth or powerful friends or public office, but who were nonetheless genuinely strong. We thought it was more likely, though, that their framers had not noticed that it was natural, and therefore almost inevitable, that human beings in extraordinary and enduring situations should think of themselves of composing new families. Eliza and I pointed out that this happened no less in democracies than in tyrannies, since human beings were the same the wide world over, and civilized only yesterday. Elected representatives, hence, could be expected to become members of the famous and powerful family of elected representatives - which would, perfectly naturally, make them wary and squeamish and stingy with respect to all the other sorts of families which, again, perfectly naturally, subdivided mankind. Elize and I ... proposed that the Constitution be amended so as to guarantee that every citizen, no matter how humble, or crazy or incompetent or deformed, somehow be given membership in some family as covertly xenophobic and crafty as the one their public servants formed.

151. Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

153. I asked Rob Roy where he had gone to college. 'Yale,' he said. I told him what Helen Dole said about Yale, that it ought to be called 'Plantation Owners' Tech.' 'I don't get it,' he said. 'I had to ask her to explain it myself,' I said. 'She said Yale was where plantation owners learned how to get the natives to kill each other instead of them.'

172. His plan? To pass out weapons to slaves, so they could overthrow their masters. Suicide.

176. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

178. There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

220. There is no good reason good can't triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia.

221. You know, the truth can be really powerful stuff. You're not expecting it.