Kurt Vonnegut Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. 1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

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

3. All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. Timequake

4. America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves. Slaughterhouse-Five

5. Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier. Cat's Cradle

6. And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you. Mother Night

7. And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you. Mother Night

8. But people didn't have to pay as much attention to the awful truth. As the living legend of the cruel tyrant in the city and the gentle holy man in the jungle grew, so, too, did the happiness of the people grow. They were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud. Cat's Cradle

9. Here is a lesson in creative writing.First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding.For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding.We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.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. 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. A Man Without a Country

10. I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool. Jailbird

11. If somebody says 'I love you' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? 'I love you, too'. Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

12. If somebody says 'I love you' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? 'I love you, too'. Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

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

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

15. Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency'. Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!

16. Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency'. Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!

17. Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

18. No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ." "And?" "No damn cat, and no damn cradle. Cat's Cradle

19. Nothing is generous. New knowledge is a valuable commodity. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we are. Cat's Cradle

20. Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho. Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!

21. Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes. Breakfast of Champions

22. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.

23. The champagne was dead. So it goes. Slaughterhouse-Five

24. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.

25. The library is full of stories of supposed triumphs which makes me very suspicious of it. It's misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm Hocus Pocus

26. The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected.

27. The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large. Breakfast of Champions

28. The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

29. To be is to do - SocratesTo do is to be - SartreDo Be Do Be Do - Sinatra

30. What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death. Slaughterhouse-Five