Kurt Vonnegut Quotes from His Work and Life

He had a lot of strong opinions based on life experiences as you’ll see in these Kurt Vonnegut quotes. 

Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer.

He was known for writing both short stories and novels.

However, he was also known for his beliefs about the way society worked in America.

He believed that the drive for greed and growth would eventually ruin all things.

He was also known for being a pessimistic person which was likely due to the negative experiences he faced in life.

His family lost wealth during the depression, his mother committed suicide, he was a POW during WWII and eventually ended up divorced. 

However, while he sounds like a negative person, he also has life lessons and some wisdom that he shares in his quotes. 

Don’t forget to also check out these life-changing Joe Dispenza quotes that show how powerful your brain is.

If you enjoy this article, check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily motivation. 

If you want more motivational quotes, check out our motivational quotes category page.

Wise Kurt Vonnegut quotes

1. “This is Sunday, and the question arises, what’ll I start tomorrow?” – Kurt Vonnegut

2. “I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.” – Kurt Vonnegut

3. “There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.” – Kurt Vonnegut

4. “People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.” – Kurt Vonnegut

5. “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.” – Kurt Vonnegut

6. “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.” – Kurt Vonnegut

7. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut

8. “What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” – Kurt Vonnegut

9. “Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.” – Kurt Vonnegut

10. “Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.” – Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut quotes from Slaughterhouse-Five

11. “And so it goes…” – Kurt Vonnegut

12. “How nice — to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.” – Kurt Vonnegut

13. “I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.” – Kurt Vonnegut

14. “All this happened, more or less.” – Kurt Vonnegut

15. “There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.” – Kurt Vonnegut

16. “If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I’m grateful that so many of those moments are nice.” – Kurt Vonnegut

17. “I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.” – Kurt Vonnegut

18. “Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is.” – Kurt Vonnegut

19. “He ate a pear. It was a hard one. It fought back against his grinding teeth. It snapped in juicy protest.” – Kurt Vonnegut

20. “Billy covered his head with his blanket. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward – always got much sicker until she went away.” – Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut quotes from Breakfast Of Champions

21. “Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both past and present.” – Kurt Vonnegut

22. “The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.” – Kurt Vonnegut

23. “He was a graduate of West Point, which is military academy that turns young men into homicidal maniacs for use in war.” – Kurt Vonnegut

24. “Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.” – Kurt Vonnegut

25. “Bad chemicals and bad ideas were the Yin and Yang of madness.” – Kurt Vonnegut

What did you learn from these Kurt Vonnegut quotes?

If you haven’t read any of Kurt Vonnegut’s work other than what is quoted above, you may want to give some of it a try.

He wrote and had published three collections of short stories, five nonfiction books, and fourteen novels while he was alive.

More of his work was published after he passed away. 

Kurt Vonnegut is a great example of what hard work and perseverance can accomplish.

There is a long list of difficult situations that he experienced in life but he continued to overcome them and keep moving forward with his writing and his work as an activist.

What’s your biggest takeaway from these Kurt Vonnegut quotes and sayings?

Do you have any other favorite quotes to add?

Let us know in the comment section below.