100+ Best Kurt Vonnegut Quotes That Will Make You Think and Laugh

“Laughter and tears are both responses to helplessness. I prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”

“I’ve got to keep going. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

“We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble if we’d just been willing to be satisfied with less high-tech apes.”

“The universe doesn’t give a damn about our dignity.”

“If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt—until it did.”

“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

“I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit.”

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”

“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”

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

“Power doesn’t corrupt people; people corrupt power.”

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded.”

“Being a humanist means having faith in the worthiness of humankind.”

“I’m not a real doctor, but I play one on TV.”

“What should I do?” “Be kind.”

“We must teach our children to be kind, for that is the only sane way to live.”

“The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be not to be loved at all.”

“I think we could blow up the world a little more often, just to keep things interesting—but no, better not.”

“We are all addicts of civilization.”

“There’s only one rule that I know of, Goddamn it: God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

“Even scientists don’t care much about truth. They care about prestige and money, like everybody else.”

“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”

“So it goes.”

“We are stuck in time, like flies in amber.”

“Time is the only truly precious thing.”

“There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no message.”

“We are all dying, but some of us are still breathing.”

“It was a very good moment, and so it will be forever.”

“The clock says it's time to die. So I guess I'd better get ready.”

“Life is a series of surprises. And what could be more surprising than to find oneself alive?”

“Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.”

“You were sick, but now you're well, and there's work to do.”

“If I had to write a single sentence to sum up the meaning of life, it would be: ‘Goodbye, cruel world.’”

“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”

“I thought wars were fought to end war.”

“There’s nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.”

“The most important thing I learned in World War II was how to smoke cigarettes without inhaling.”

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be in wartime.”

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

“And even if it’s only in your dreams, you ought to thank God for the privilege of being alive now.”

“I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I’m dead.”

“We’re doomed by our own stupidity, not by fate.”

“There is no reason to kill each other. We’re all in this together.”

“The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.”

“The arts are healthy and necessary luxuries, not because they draw attention to themselves, but because they celebrate ordinary things.”

“We are robots programmed by our DNA and our environments.”

“If the universe is a machine, then we are cogs in it—and unaware ones at that.”

“We are all puppets. But some of us believe we’re pulling our own strings.”

“We pretend to make choices, but the choices make us.”

“I don’t believe in free will. I think we are biological machines.”

“We are all in a fix, and no one knows how we got here or how to get out.”

“The idea of free will is comforting, but probably false.”

“We are programmed to reproduce, consume, and die.”

“We are all actors in a play we didn’t write.”

“You call it freedom. I call it confusion.”

“We’re all just dancing to music we can’t hear.”

“I am a fatalist who dances.”

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow.”

“The great thing about writing is that you don’t have to be dressed to do it.”

“I make you feel better by telling you the truth, but making it funny.”

“I was a public relations man for General Electric. I wrote bullshit for a living.”

“The aim of all art is to comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable.”

“When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”

“We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”

“Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.”

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the arts are not a way to make a living. They are a way to make a life.”

“Write to please just one person. If you open it up to the crowd, you lose your voice.”

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”

“Literature is the human activity that makes me most proud to be human.”

“Science is magic that works.”

“We are all engineers of our own destruction.”

“Technology is not the enemy. Stupidity is the enemy.”

“We are surrounded by machines that think, and we are afraid they might replace us. But we are machines that don’t think.”

“The problem with modern science is that it assumes everything has a solution.”

“We worship technology, but we don’t understand it.”

“Progress isn’t always progress.”

“Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no more so than the slide rule.”

“We are creating tools so powerful that we can no longer control them.”

“Scientists are just as capable of self-deception as anyone else.”

“The Earth is a cradle of life, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever.”

“We are all astronauts on a vessel called Earth.”

“I am a humanist, which means I have faith in the worthiness of humankind.”

“If God were alive, he’d be ashamed of us.”

“I don’t want to fake my way through life, pretending to believe in things I don’t.”

“Religion is a cultural artifact, not a divine revelation.”

“I think we are all perfect strangers to each other.”

“The mystery of existence is the most beautiful thing we can experience.”

“I believe in life, even when it hurts.”

“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”

“Spirituality is not about belief. It’s about behavior.”

“I don’t know what happens after death. But I hope it’s peaceful.”

“The only prayer I know is: ‘Please, please, please.’”

“We are all temporary miracles.”

“Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.”

“We are all in need of someone to hold our hand.”

“To be loved is the greatest thing.”

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”

“We are all broken, but some of us are still holding hands.”

“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over.”

“Romance was invented by the French to make their lousy wine drinkable.”

“People need good lies. Too much truth can be unbearable.”

“Marriage is a wonderful institution. But who wants to be institutionalized?”

“We are all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”

“The truth is love is never enough.”

“Happiness is a long walk with a dog on a beach.”

“I will die proud of my humanism.”

“Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.”

“I’m not distressed by the idea of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

“I think each person is a miracle.”

“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”

“I’m not interested in immortality through my work. I want immortality through not dying.”

“Death is pretty much final. Everything else is rumor.”

“We are all terminal cases.”

“So it goes.”

“I don’t want to waste my last days on Earth worrying about my legacy.”

“All I ever wanted was to be remembered as kind.”

“We are all stories in the end. Make yours a good one.”