It is always pitiful when any human being falls into a condition hardly more respectable than that of an animal. How much more pitiful it is when the person who falls has had all the advantages!
I keep losing and regaining my equilibrium, which is the basic plot of all popular fiction. And I myself am a work of fiction.
I apologize because of the terrible mess the planet is in. But it has always been a mess. There have never been any ‘Good Old Days,’ there have just been days. And as I say to my grandchildren, ‘Don’t look at me. I just got here myself.’
I had a friend who was a heavy drinker. If somebody asked him if he’d been drunk the night before, he would always answer offhandedly, ‘Oh, I imagine.’ I’ve always liked that answer. It acknowledges life as a dream.
Dr. Brainard Keyes Bullard, President of Wyandotte College, said in an address tonight that most of the worlds ills can be traced to the fact that Mans knowledge of himself has not kept pace with his knowledge of the physical world.
The crowd, having been promised nothing, felt cheated, having received nothing.
Son – they say there isn’t any royalty in this country, but do you want me to tell you how to be king of the United States of America? Just fall through the hole in a privy and come out smelling like a rose.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
The two prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck.
Teaching, may I say, is the noblest profession of all in a democracy.
The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.
You had to get everything exactly right or the editors would give you hell.
One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.
Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease.
I wish we had all been born birds instead.
I’m not a drug salesman. I’m a writer.
Vonnegut could not help looking back, despite the danger of being turned metaphorically into a pillar of salt, into am emblem of the death that comes to those who cannot let go of the past.
We’re not too young for love, just too young for about everything there is that goes with love.
If you make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper, what is that but a practical joke? All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.
Alcohol and marijuana, if used in moderation, plus loud, usually low-class music, make stress and boredom infinitely more bearable.