Kurt Vonnegut Quotes About War

Quotes about: War

• All the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Men, Voice

  "Breakfast Of Champions". Book by Kurt Vonnegut, 1973.

• Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Gun, Pigs

  "Cat's Cradle". Book by Kurt Vonnegut (Chapter 114), 1963.

• During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in - and which we lost - every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Country, War, Artist

  "Vonnegut at 80". Interview with David Hoppe, www.nuvo.net. January 1, 2003.

• There are plenty of good reasons for fighting...but no good reason to ever hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive....it's that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Hate, War, Fighting

• I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Country, War, Taken

  "Custodians of chaos" by Kurt Vonnegut, www.theguardian.com. January 20, 2006.

• He was a graduate of West Point, which is military academy that turns young men into homicidal maniacs for use in war.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Military, War, Men

• War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the First World War so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Gun, Two

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.88, Seven Stories Press

• One thing I learned, with permission of the school committee of Indianapolis, was that when a tyrant or a government gets in trouble it wonders what to do. Declare war! Then nothing else matters. It's like chess; when in doubt, castle.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, School, Government

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. June 12, 2003.

• I asked this heroic pet lover how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. Salvador Biagiani was philosophical. He said it sure beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Viet Nam War.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Dog, War, Philosophical

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian”, p.16, Seven Stories Press

• Make war not on terrorism but on ignorance, on sickness and on environmental degradation.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Ignorance, Environmental

• There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Character, People

  KURT VONNEGUT JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE”

• Our government's got a war on drugs. That's certainly better than no drugs at all.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Government, Drug

• I try to keep deep love out of my stories because, once that particular subject comes up, it is almost impossible to talk about anything else. Readers don't want to hear about anything else. They go gaga about love. If a lover in a story wins his true love, that's the end of the tale, even if World War III is about to begin, and the sky is black with flying saucers.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Love, War, Winning

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.185, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• World War II made war reputable because it was a just war. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. You know how many other just wars there have been? Not many. And the guys I served with became my brothers. If it weren't for World War II, I'd now be the garden editor of The Indianapolis Star. I wouldn't have moved away.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Brother, Stars, War

• What war has always been is a puberty ceremony.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Peace, War, Ceremony

• Because of the movies nobody will believe that it was babies who fought the war.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Baby, War, Believe

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

• The Great Depression was going on, so that the station and the streets teemed with homeless people, just as they do today. The newspapers were full of stories of worker layoffs and farm foreclosures and bank failures, just as they are today. All that has changed, in my opinion, is that, thanks to television, we can hide a Great Depression. We may even be hiding a Third World War.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, People, May

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.92, Dial Press

• The New York Daily News suggested that my biggest war crime was not killing myself like a gentleman. Presumably Hitler was a gentleman.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  New York, War, Gentleman

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Mother Night: A Novel”, p.162, Dial Press

• During the Vietnam War, Abbie Hoffman announced that the new high was banana peels taken rectally. So then FBI scientists stuffed banana peels up their asses to find out if this was true or not.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Taken, Vietnam

  Kurt Vonnegut (2017). “A Man Without a Country”, p.108, Dial Press

• Well, it's an ancestral tribe. These were immigrants from north of Germany who came here about the time of the Civil War, but anyway, these people called themselves free thinkers. They were impressed, incidentally, by Darwin. They're called Humanists now; people who aren't so sure that the Bible is the Word of God.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, People, Germany

• What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Life Lesson, Eye

• You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Baby, Children, War

  Slaughterhouse-Five ch. 5 (1969)

• Fathers are always so proud the first time they see their sons in uniform," she said. "I know Big John Karpinski was," I said. He is my neighbor to the north, of course. Big John's son Little John did badly in high school, and the police caught him selling dope. So he joined the Army while the Vietnam War was going on. And the first time he came home in uniform, I never saw Big John so happy, because it looked to him as though Little John was all straightened out and would amount to something. But then Little John came home in a body bag.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Father, War, Home

  Kurt Vonnegut (1998). “Bluebeard”, Dial Press

• They were adored by the Germans, who thought they were exactly what Englishmen ought to be. They made war look stylish and reasonable, and fun... They were dressed half for battle, half for tennis or croquet.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Fun, War, Tennis

• What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too. And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Believe, Glaciers

  Harold Bloom, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (2009). “Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five”, p.144, Infobase Publishing

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