The fortifications have never been attacked, nor has any sane man ever proposed any reason why they should be attacked. They have never defended anything. Fourteen hundred persons are said to have died while building them. Of these fourteen hundred, about half are said to have been executed in public for substandard zeal.
("Cat's Cradle")
More Quotes from Kurt Vonnegut:
As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.Kurt Vonnegut
He watched and recorded their subversive activites with love, amusement, and detachment.
Kurt Vonnegut
If you want to find a Granfalloon, remove the skin from a toy balloon.
Kurt Vonnegut
They didn't think it had anything to do with the war. They were sure Billy was going to pieces because his father had thrown him into the deep end of the Y.M.C.A. swimming pool when he was a little boy, and had then taken him to the rim of the Grand Canyon.
Kurt Vonnegut
He wanted to talk to them, if he could, to discover whether they had truths about life which he had never heard before. Here is what he hoped new truths might do for him: enable him to laugh at his troubles, to go on living, and to keep out of the North Wing of the Midland County General Hospital, which was for lunatics.
Kurt Vonnegut
You are going to do this voluntarily, Mr. Constant, so that the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent can have a drama of dignified self-sacrifice to remember and ponder through all time.
Kurt Vonnegut
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: Enthusiasm QuotesBased on Keywords: fortifications, substandard
A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns.
Joseph Conrad
I don't like doing most things unless I can do them quite well.
Oliver Reed
We've got the children so we have to deal with each other because we have to deal with children's problems, you know, and our own problems. But some days it's fine, and then some days we just are at each other's throat.
Ringo Starr