Article image

17 Clever and Wise Quotes From Kurt Vonnegut

When Kurt Vonnegut passed away in 2007, he left the world with a body of work that spans more than half a century. His unique style — satirical and funny, with characteristically short and simple sentences that express complex ideas in an approachable yet profound manner — is evident throughout his three short-story collections, plays, autobiographical works, and 14 novels, including 1969’s Slaughterhouse-Five and 1963’s Cat's Cradle.

Vonnegut’s writing was often fatalistic, his humor dark. He had, after all, seen the horrors of World War II firsthand. He was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, and was kept as a prisoner of war in Dresden. He survived the near-total obliteration of the city by seeking refuge in a meat locker at the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned — an experience he later dealt with, in his own inimitable style, in Slaughterhouse-Five. (“So it goes” is the novel’s shrug-like refrain.)

That said, Vonnegut was anything but negative. He was a humanist, and for many years, he served as the president of the American Humanist Association. “Being a humanist,” he once wrote, “means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.” He wrote and spoke fervently but honestly about war and religion and politics, but always from a fundamental perspective of kindness and love — using humor as the salve for life’s many trials.

Through his writing, interviews, and lectures, Vonnegut left us with a wealth of quotes, covering everything from the nature of literature to the importance of jokes, and what he saw as one of the most crucial things in life, if not the most crucial thing: to be kind.

Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines in only twenty-six symbols, ten Arabic numbers, and about eight punctuation marks.

Share Quote

The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

Share Quote

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

Share Quote

Nothing I can say can have any effect, except to say to somebody else, “You're not alone.” That's as far as it goes.

Share Quote

The function of the artist is to make people like life better than before.

Share Quote

And how should we behave during this Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should also stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don’t already have one.

Share Quote

Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.

Share Quote

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

Share Quote

Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Share Quote

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Share Quote

I want to stay as close on 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… Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.

Share Quote

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.

Share Quote

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Share Quote

Let others bring order to chaos. I will bring chaos to order. If all writers would do that, then perhaps everyone will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

Share Quote

If we are wounded by an ugly idea, we must count it as part of the cost of freedom and, like American heroes in the days gone by, bravely carry on.

Share Quote

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

Share Quote

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.”

Share Quote

Photo credit: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/ Alamy Stock Photo

Author image
About the Author
Tony Dunnell
Tony is an English writer of non-fiction and fiction living on the edge of the Amazon jungle.
Play more header background
Play more icon
Daily Question
Fill in the blank: "You must love in such a way that the person you love feels ___." - Thích Nhất Hạnh

More Inspiration

happiness theme icon

From our first babblings to our last word, we make but one statement, and that is our life.

separator icon
Richard Paul Evans
motivation theme icon

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

separator icon
Alan Watts
hope theme icon

The only lasting truth is change.

separator icon
Octavia Butler
love theme icon

You will never get any more out of life than you expect.

separator icon
Bruce Lee
wisdom theme icon

People living deeply have no fear of death.

separator icon
Anaïs Nin
happiness theme icon

You have to fail in order to practice being brave.

separator icon
Mary Tyler Moore
motivation theme icon

The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.

separator icon
Sheryl Sandberg
hope theme icon

My dark days made me strong. Or maybe I already was strong, and they made me prove it.

separator icon
Emery Lord
love theme icon

I felt it shelter to speak to you.

separator icon
Emily Dickinson
wisdom theme icon

Human beings must always be on the watch for the coming of wonders.

separator icon
E.B. White
happiness theme icon

You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people, if you don't serve the people.

separator icon
Cornel West