1,579 Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief.

Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

As I spoke of another's love and looked into the wide, blue windows of her soul, a rich, insistent yearning flooded my senses.--"Tango

There is nothing left of him but curiosity and a pair of eyes.

And even now, at the rueful age of sixty-six, I find my knees still turn to water when I encounter anyone who still considers it a possibility that there will one day be one big happy peaceful family on Earth--the Family of Man. If I were this very day to meet myself as I was in Nineteen-hundred and Thirty-three, I would swoon with pity and respectfulness.

Ако бях млад, щях да напиша историята на човешката глупост, щях да се покатеря на върха на планината Макейб и да легна по гръб, и да подложа историята на главата си, и щях да взема от Земята малко от синьобялата отрова , която превръща хората в статуи, и щях да се превърна в статуя, която лежи по гръб, грозно ухилена прави дълъг нос, сами знаете Кому.

[...] grew up here, in what show business people, which now includes our best-known politicians and so-called journalists, often call 'flyover country.' We are somewhere between television cameras in Washington DC, and New York, and Los Angeles. Please join me in saying to the undersides of their airplanes, 'Go to hell.

Pensate che gli antichi romani fossero intelligenti? Guardate quanto sono cretini i loro numeri. Riguardo al declino e alla caduta della civiltà romana c'è una teoria secondo cui si trattò di una conseguenza delle loro tubature in piombo. L'avvelenamento da piombo rende la gente pigra e ottusa. Qual'è la vostra scusa?

When a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moment, past, present, future, always have existed, always will exist.