More on Vonnegut

This was a man who, when his beloved sister died of cancer, adopted and raised her three children alongside three of his own. He later wrote, “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

This was a man who saw authority and said, “The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.” This was a man who titled one of his novels Thank you, Dr. Kevorkian.

This was a man—a humanist—who declared, in his final essay, “If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, ‘Kurt is up in Heaven now.’ That’s my favorite joke.” Another favorite joke of his was that his smoking habit was “a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.”

Kurt Vonnegut, with his outrageous stories and perfectly flawed characters, was a lot of things: funny, cynical and twisted, honest, sharp and brave, an American icon. Some people say he was our century’s Mark Twain; others might say that Mark Twain was the 19th century’s Kurt Vonnegut.

Vonnegut’s Progressive Vision

In Vonnegut’s last book, A Man Without a Country, he writes of his struggle to make America live up to its promise. Here are some of the most important quotes from the book, selected by Center for American Progress intern Harry Waisbren.

Vonnegut on America’s Stature in the World

“In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound ‘em and kill ‘em and torture ‘em and imprison ‘em all we want.”

Vonnegut on Understanding Our Leaders

“By saying that our leaders are power drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.”

Vonnegut on U.S. Foreign Policy

“Can I tell you the truth? I mean, this isn’t the TV news is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.”

Vonnegut on Human nature

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”

Vonnegut on War

“Killing industrial quantities of defenseless human families, whether by old-fashioned apparatus or by newfangled contraptions from universities, in the expectation of gaining military or diplomatic advantage thereby, may not be such a hot idea after all.”