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10 Timeless Quotes from Kurt Vonnegut

By November 11, 2016November 10th, 2017Authors, Quotations

Vonnegutisms for any age

Kurt Vonnegut (November 11th 1922 – April 11th 2007) was an American author, and is now a true American idol. In a career spanning five decades, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays and five works of non-fiction. Possibly his most famous work is the darkly satirical, anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five.

Vonnegut was born and raised in Indiana until he dropped out of university to enlist in the United States Army where he was deployed to Europe to fight in World War II. Eventually captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, Vonnegut was held in Dresden. It’s this experience and the author’s post traumatic stress disorder that inspired Slaughterhouse Five, a chaotic, darkly satirical anti-war novel.

Kurt Vonnegut’s quotes and Vonnegutisms have become as famous as the novels and so today we have a few timeless ones for you.

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”

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

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

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



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

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, “It might have been.”

“And 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.”



“Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.”

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

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

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