Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works, with further collections being published after his death. Explore our collection of Kurt Vonnegut Quotes that will inspire you to be a better person.
People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
– Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
1. “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” – Kurt Vonnegut
2. “There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.” – Kurt Vonnegut
3. “Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.” – Kurt Vonnegut
4. “People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.” – Kurt Vonnegut
5. “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.” – Kurt Vonnegut
6. “Science is magic that works.” – Kurt Vonnegut
7. “Writers get a nice break in one way, at least: They can treat their mental illnesses every day.” – Kurt Vonnegut
8. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut
9. “Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.” – Kurt Vonnegut
10. “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” – Kurt Vonnegut
11. “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” – Kurt Vonnegut
12. “A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.” – Kurt Vonnegut
13. “Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.” – Kurt Vonnegut
14. “Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.” – Kurt Vonnegut
15. “Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to conquer the universe.” – Kurt Vonnegut
16. “The practice of art isn’t to make a living. It’s to make your soul grow.” – Kurt Vonnegut
17. “All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.” – Kurt Vonnegut
18. “If you can do no good, at least do no harm.” – Kurt Vonnegut
19. “The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.” – Kurt Vonnegut
20. “People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.” – Kurt Vonnegut
21. “A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.” – Kurt Vonnegut
22. “We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane” – Kurt Vonnegut
23. “Never trust a survivor until you know how they survived.” – Kurt Vonnegut
24. “There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.” – Kurt Vonnegut
25. “Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.” – Kurt Vonnegut
26. “I admire anybody who finishes a work of art, no matter how awful it may be.” – Kurt Vonnegut
27. “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.” – Kurt Vonnegut
28. “The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” – Kurt Vonnegut
29. “Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable.” – Kurt Vonnegut
30. “We are what we imagine ourselves to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut
31. “A step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.” – Kurt Vonnegut
32. “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” – Kurt Vonnegut
33. “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
34. “Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.” – Kurt Vonnegut
35. “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” – Kurt Vonnegut
36. “I think writers are the most important members of society, not just potentially but actually.” – Kurt Vonnegut
37. “Life’s barely long enough to get good at one thing. If that long. So be careful what you get good at.” – Kurt Vonnegut
38. “Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.” – Kurt Vonnegut
39. “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
40. “Nobody’s so damn well educated that you can’t learn ninety percent of what he knows in six weeks. The other ten percent is decoration.” – Kurt Vonnegut
