1,579 Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases...

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, the demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

Just in the nick of time they realized that it was their own habitat they were wrecking -- that they weren't merely visitors.

I don't think there would be many jokes, if there weren't constant frustration and fear and so forth. It's a response to bad troubles like crime.

I now make my living by being impolite. I am clumsy at it.

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.

If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.

Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.

I am from a family of artists. Here I am, making a living in the arts. It has not been a rebellion. It's as though I had taken over the family Esso station.