Quotes from Kurt Vonnegut

Most things in this world don´t work, aspirin do.

There is a strong feeling in the Middle West that the artist is not pulling his own weight no matter how hard he may work, that the other people are doing the real stuff.

People say there are no atheists in foxholes. A lot of people think this is a good argument against atheism. Personally, I think it's a much better argument against foxholes.

You don't do art for any other reason than to help your soul grow.

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

If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.

The canary bird in the coal mine theory of the arts: artists should be treasured as alarm systems.

The arts are not a way to make a living.

One thing I hate about school committees today is that they cut arts programs out of the curriculum because they say the arts aren't a way to make a living.

People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

That's what is was to be young - to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.

I keep losing and regaining my equilibrium, which is the basic plot of all popular fiction. And I myself am a work of fiction.

What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.

A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.

Contemplating a purported work of art is a social activity. Either you have a rewarding time, or you don't. You don't have to say why afterward. You don't have to say anything.

It used to be said of a man who had suffered a catastrophic setback in his line of work that he had been handed his head on a platter. We are being handed our heads with tweezers now.

kar.a.bek.i.an (n.); (from Rabo Karabekian, U.S. 20th Cent. painter). Fiasco in which a person causes total destruction of own work and reputation through stupidity, carelessness or both.

I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better.

The person who writes the bank's commercials is not the person who makes the loans.

A committee of three can accomplish much if two don't show up.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers - joined in the serious business of keeping our food, shelter, clothing and loved ones from combining with oxygen.

Where you can see tribal behavior now is in this business about teaching evolution in a science class and intelligent design. It's the scientists themselves are behaving tribally.

Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn't even nothing or once.