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Kurt Vonnegut Zitate
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Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. war ein US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller.

✵ 11. November 1922 – 11. April 2007   •   Andere Namen Vonegut, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Kurt Vonnegut Foto
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Kurt Vonnegut Berühmte Zitate

„Bombardiert zu werden ist eine außerordentlich passive Angelegenheit. Es gibt nichts, was man tun kann – außer vielleicht zu den Bomben zu sprechen. Man hat als Überlebender auch nichts, worauf man stolz sein könnte.“

Kurt Vonnegut

in einem Gespräch mit Volker Hage, welt.de http://www.welt.de/kultur/article805230/Schriftsteller_Kurt_Vonnegut_stirbt_nach_Sturz.html, 12. April 2007

„Darum hat Kurt Vonnegut einmal gefragt: "Was ist das für eine Presse, die wir heute haben, wenn man Bücher lesen muss, um zu wissen, was in der Welt passiert?"“

Kurt Vonnegut

Armin Wertz: Meister der geheimen Kriege, 22. März 2017 heise.de https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Meister-der-geheimen-Kriege-3650452.html.
"And still on the subject of books: Our daily sources of news, papers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books can we find out what is really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published near the start of this humiliating, shameful blood-soaked year." - „I Love You, Madame Librarian“. 6. August 2004 inthesetimes.com http://inthesetimes.com/article/903/i_love_you_madame_librarian

Kurt Vonnegut: Zitate auf Englisch

“Many people need desperately to receive this message: "I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone."”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Timequake

Timequake (1997)

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch The Sirens of Titan

Quelle: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 7 “Victory” (p. 165; epigram)

“Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

“I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency."”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Slapstick

Prologue
Slapstick (1976)

“Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

“Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles away from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.
Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes.
And everyday my government gives me a count of corpses created by the military service in Vietnam. So it goes.
My father died many years ago now — of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch A Man Without a Country

A close paraphrase of this (beginning "Do not use...") is repeated in a commencement address at Cloves Hall, 27 April 2007, as reprinted in Armageddon in Retrospect
A Man Without a Country (2005)

“We've sure come a long way since then. Sometimes I wish we hadn't. I hate H-bombs and the Jerry Springer show.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

“The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, "There's a Chaplain who never visited the front."”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

“The controls were anything but a hunch-player’s delight in a Universe composed of one-trillionth part matter to one decillion parts black velvet futility.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch The Sirens of Titan

Epilogue “Reunion with Stony” (p. 303)
The Sirens of Titan (1959)

“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.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

“Things die. All things die.”

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Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

Introduction, "About This Play"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)

“One of the great American tragedies is to have participated in a just war. It's been possible for politicians and movie-makers to encourage us we're always good guys. The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of.”

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Kurt Vonnegut

Interviewed by Roger Friedman, "God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70164,00.html, FoxNews.com (11 November 2002)
Various interviews

“I don't care if I'm remembered or not when I'm dead. (A scientist I knew at General Electric, who was married to a woman named Josephine, said to me, "Why should I buy life insurance? If I die, I won't care what's happening to Jo. I won't care about anything. I'll be dead.")”

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Kurt Vonnegut

Fates Worse than Death (1991)

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

“Congressman Nixon had asked me why, as the son of immigrants who had been treated so well by Americans, as a man who had been treated like a son and been sent to Harvard by an American capitalist, I had been so ungrateful to the American economic system.
The answer I gave him was not original. Nothing about me has ever been original. I repeated what my one-time hero, Kenneth Whistler, had said in reply to the same general sort of question long, long ago. Whistler had been a witness at a trial of strikers accused of violence. The judge had become curious about him, had asked him why such a well-educated man from such a good family would so immerse himself in the working class.
My stolen answer to Nixon was this: "Why? The Sermon on the Mount, sir."”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Jailbird

Jailbird (1979)

“Hey — guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

“These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth—a nightmare of meaningless without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions.
Only inwardness remained to be explored.
Only the human soul remained terra incognita.
This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch The Sirens of Titan

Quelle: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 8)

“Rumfoord had known that Constant would try to debase the picture by using it in commerce. Constant’s father had done a similar thing when he found he could not buy Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” at any price. The old man had punished Mona Lisa by having her used in an advertising campaign for suppositories. It was the free-enterprise way of handling beauty that threatened to get the upper hand.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch The Sirens of Titan

Quelle: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 2 “Cheers in the Wirehouse” (p. 56)

“My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."”

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Kurt Vonnegut

I Love You, Madame Librarian (2004)

“I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That’s why we’ve got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.”

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Kurt Vonnegut

On evolution vs. "intelligent design", interviewed by Jon Stewart, The Daily Show http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=18090&title=kurt-vonnegut/ (13 September 2005)
Various interviews

“The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

“Dear Reader: The title of this book is composed of three words from my novel Cat's Cradle. A wampeter is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. Foma are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: "Prosperity is just around the corner." A granfalloon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings. Taken together, the words form as good an umbrella as any for this collection of some of the reviews and essays I've written, a few of the speeches I made.”

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Kurt Vonnegut

"Preface"
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)

“The riot, then, was an exercise in science and theology—a seeking after clues by the living as to what life was all about.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch The Sirens of Titan

Quelle: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 44)

“I hadn't aimed at anything. If I had thought of the bullet's hitting anything, I don't remember now. I was the great marksman, anyway. If I aimed at nothing, then nothing is what I would hit. The bullet was a symbol, and nobody was ever hurt by a symbol. It was a farewell to my childhood and a confirmation of my manhood. Why didn't I use a blank cartridge? What kind of a symbol would that have been?”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Deadeye Dick

Describing an accident in which the narrator, as a child, accidentally shot a woman
Deadeye Dick (1982)

“We're having a celebration, so all sorts of things have been said which are not true," I said. "That's how to act at a party.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Bluebeard

Bluebeard (1987)

“I think yet again of my father, who struggled to become a painter after he was forced into early and unwelcome retirement by the Great Depression. He has reason to be optimistic about his new career, since the early stages of his pictures, whether still or portraits or landscapes, were full of pow. Mother, meaning to be helpful, would say of each one: "That's really wonderful, Kurt. Now all you have to do is finish it." He would then ruin it. I remember a portrait he did of his only brother, Alex, who was an insurance salesman, which he called "Special Agent". When he roughed it in, his hand and eye conspired with a few bold strokes to capture several important truths about Alex, including a hint of disappointment. Uncle Alex was a proud graduate of Harvard, who would rather have been a scholar of literature than an insurance man.
When Father finished the portrait, made sure every square inch of masonite had its share of paint, Uncle Alex had disappeared entirely. We had a drunk and lustful Queen Victoria instead. This was terrible.”

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Kurt Vonnegut

Fates Worse than Death (1991)

“I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”

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Kurt Vonnegut buch Jailbird

Quelle: Jailbird (1979), p. 14

“During my controlled near-death experiences, I’ve met Sir Isaac Newton, who died back in 1727 as often as I’ve met Saint Peter. They both hang out at the Heaven end of the blue tunnel of the Afterlife. Saint Peter is there because it’s his job. Sir Isaac is there because of his insatiable curiosity about what the blue tunnel is, how the blue tunnel works.
It isn’t enough for Newton that during his eighty-five years on Earth he invented calculus, codified and quantified the laws of gravity, motion and optics, and designed the first reflecting telescope. He can’t forgive himself for having left it to Darwin to come up with the theory of evolution, to Pasteur to come up with the germ theory, and to Albert Einstein to come up with relativity. “I must have been deaf, dumb, and blind not to have come up with those myself,” he said to me. “What could have been more obvious?””

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Kurt Vonnegut buch God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

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