100 Top & Most Popular Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

1. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
2. “So it goes.”
3. “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
4. “I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
5. “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
6. “Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
7. “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘It might have been.'”
8. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
9. “Being a humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
10. “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
11. “All this happened, more or less.”
12. “So it goes.”
13. “I can have oodles of charm when I want to.”
14. “There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”
15. “If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts.”
16. “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.”
17. “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”
18. “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.”
19. “And so it goes…”
20. “I can have oodles of charm when I want to.”
21. “We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.”
22. “Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
23. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
24. “The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that 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 moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.”
25. “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you”.

26. “The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn’t really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn’t going to compose Beethoven’s Fifth.”
27. “Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are.”
28. “The practice of art isn’t to make a living. It’s to make your soul grow.”
29. “I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.”
30. “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
31. “I don’t know what it is about Hoosiers, but wherever you go there is always a Hoosier doing something very important there.”
32. “I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.”
33. “I have been a sore-headed occupant of a file drawer labeled ‘Science Fiction’ ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”
34. “I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.”
35. “Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.”
36. “I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren’t going to want to go on living.”
37. “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
38. “I can’t write anymore. I can’t read. I’m not even watching much TV. I’m just so worried about the country.”
39. “If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC.”
40. “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”
41. “She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing.”
42. “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
43. “I’ve got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?”
44. “I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
45. “We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.”
46. “We have to be continually jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
47. “All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
48. “People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.”
49. “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies – God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
50. “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.”

And here are the last 25:

51. “The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.”

53. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
54. “We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.”
55. “There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.”
56. “The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.”
57. “The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”
58. “The America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
59. “I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
60. “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
61. “The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.”
62. “Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'”
63. “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.”
64. “A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”
65. “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘It might have been.'”
66. “My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps right on doing bad, dumb things.”
67. “In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness.”
68. “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
69. “How nice–to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”
70. “The reason American cars don’t sell anymore is that they have forgotten how to design the American Dream. What does it matter if you buy a car today or six months from now, because cars are not beautiful. That’s why the American auto industry is in trouble: no design, no vision.”
71. “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.”
72. “I am a human being, not a human doing.”
73. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
74. “So it goes.”
75. “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.”
76. “I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.”
77. “There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ’em all away from you. That’s never possible.”
78. “I have been a writer since puberty.”
79. “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

80. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
81. “If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”
82. “The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.”
83. “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.”
84. “All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.”
85. “Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
86. “If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”
87. “I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”
88. “Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.”
89. “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”
90. “We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.”
91. “I can have oodles of charm when I want to.”
92. “It’s a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.”
93. “There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”
94. “You can’t just eat good food. You’ve got to talk about it too. And you’ve got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food.”
95. “The important thing I learned from Tralfamadore was that 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 moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
96. “People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.”
97. “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
98. “I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
99. “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
100. “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.