Kurt Vonnegut citations (347 citations, Page 8)

Chapter 1 Page 4 http://miltonthed.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/1/6/14162844/vonnegut_kurt_-_god_bless_you_mr_rosewater.pdf <br class="br">God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

“People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.”

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Kurt Vonnegut

Interview Public Radio International (October 2006)
Various interviews

“Why throw money at problems? That's what money is for.
Should the nation's wealth be redistributed? It has been and continues to be redistributed to a few people in a manner strikingly unhelpful.”

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Kurt Vonnegut livre Timequake

Timequake (1997)

“Don't lecture me on race relations. I don't have a molecule of prejudice. I've been in battle with every kind of man there is. I've been in bed with every kind of woman there is — from a Laplander to a Tierra del Fuegian. If I'd ever been to the South Pole, there'd be a hell of a lot of penguins who looked like me.”

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Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

"Harold Ryan"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)

“Well, I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president.”

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Kurt Vonnegut

As quoted in "Kurt Vonnegut's 'Stardust Memory'" http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2006/1326, Harvey Wasserman, The Free Press (4 March 2006) <br class="br">Various interviews

“If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now."”

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Kurt Vonnegut livre A Man Without a Country

That's my favorite joke.
A Man Without a Country (2005)

“Eliza and I composed a precocious critique of the Constitution of the United States of America … We argued that is was as good a scheme for misery as any, since its success in keeping the common people reasonably happy and proud depended on the strength of the people themselves — and yet it prescribed no practical machinery which would tend to make the people, as opposed to their elected representatives, strong.
We said it was possible that the framers of the Constitution were blind to the beauty of persons who were without great wealth or powerful friends or public office, but who were nonetheless genuinely strong.
We thought it was more likely, though, that their framers had not noticed that it was natural, and therefore almost inevitable, that human beings in extraordinary and enduring situations should think of themselves of composing new families. Eliza and I pointed out that this happened no less in democracies than in tyrannies, since human beings were the same the wide world over, and civilized only yesterday.
Elected representatives, hence, could be expected to become members of the famous and powerful family of elected representatives — which would, perfectly naturally, make them wary and squeamish and stingy with respect to all the other sorts of families which, again, perfectly naturally, subdivided mankind.
Eliza and I … proposed that the Constitution be amended so as to guarantee that every citizen, no matter how humble, or crazy or incompetent or deformed, somehow be given membership in some family as covertly xenophobic and crafty as the one their public servants formed.”

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Kurt Vonnegut livre Slapstick

Source: Slapstick (1976), Ch. 6

“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.”

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Kurt Vonnegut livre God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

"Eliot Rosewater" to a group of volunteer firemen.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)