Kurt Vonnegut Quotes About Universe

Quotes about: Universe

• You are pooped and demoralised,” read Dwayne. “Why wouldn’t you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Breakfast Of Champions, Reason, Courses

• The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Science, Mystery, Wonder

• Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Mean, Math

• Belief is nearly the whole of the universe whether based on truth or not.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Belief, Whole, Universe

  Kurt Vonnegut (1987). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, New York : Delacorte Press

• Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir." he read, "You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next - and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. You are pooped and demoralized, " read Dwayne. "Why wouldn't you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Hate, Brave, Next

• Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Being Yourself, Unique, Editors

  Kurt Vonnegut (2012). “Kurt Vonnegut: Letters”, Random House

• Thinking doesn't seem to help very much. The human brain is too high-powered to have many practical uses in this particular universe.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Power, Thinking, Brain

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.81, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• Children get smashed for hours on some strictly limited aspect of the Great Big Everything, the Universe, such as water or snow or mud or colors or rocks.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Children, Rocks, Color

• What is the purpose of life?...To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Eye, Purpose, Ears

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.141, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• . . . but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  People, Awful, Rooms

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “The Sirens of Titan: An Original Novel”, Laurel

• Sometimes I wonder about the Creator of the Universe.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Sometimes, Wonder, Breakfast Of Champions

  Kurt Vonnegut (1973). “Breakfast of champions: or, Goodbye blue Monday!”, Dell

• One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Might, Suspects, Universe

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.229, Dial Press

• There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it: What is the purpose of life? Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with: To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Eye, Pockets

• It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an experiment. They put the idea into Earthlings' heads that the whole Universe had been created by one big animal who looked just like them. He sat on a throne with a lot of less fancy thrones all around him. When people died they got to sit on those other thrones forever because they were such close relatives of the Creator. The people down here just ate that up!

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Believe, Animal, Ideas

  Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.141, Penguin

• If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by 'free will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Ideas, Slaughterhouse Five, Earth

  KURT VONNEGUT JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE”

• And what is literature, Rabo," he said, "but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the universe but a few molecules who have the disease called 'thought'.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Molecules, Literature, Disease

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.210, Dial Press

• Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes - "with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other," says Billy Pilgrim.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Baby, Stars, Two

  Kurt Vonnegut (1969). “Slaughterhouse-five: or, The children's crusade, a duty-dance with death”

• I've got at least one tiny corner of the universe I can make just the way I want it.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Self, Want, Way

• As far as I'm concerned ... the Universe is a junk yard, with everything overpriced. I am through poking around in the junk heaps, looking for bargains. Every so-called bargain ... has been connected by fine wires to a dynamite bouquet.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Wire, Junk, Yards

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “The Sirens of Titan: An Original Novel”, Laurel

• I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. ‘This above all ...’

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Artist, Want, Impatience

• The arts put man at the center of the universe, whether he belongs there or not. Military science, on the other hand, treats man as garbage - and his children, and his cities, too. Military science is probably right about the contemptibility of man in the vastness of the universe. Still - I deny that contemptibility, and I beg you to deny it, through the creation of appreciation of art.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Appreciation, Art, Children

  Kurt Vonnegut's Commencement Address at Bennington College, 1970.

• Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next--and on and on.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Islands, People, Heaven

  Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Galapagos: A Novel”, Dial Press

• I beg you to believe the most ridiculous superstition of all: that humanity is at the center of the universe, the fulfiller or frustrateor of the grandest dreams of God Almighty.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Dream, Believe, Humanity

• The two prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Two, Luck, Prime

• Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. The creator of the universe has been unknown to us so far. We serve as well as we can to the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Punishment, Afterlife, Expectations

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