In celebration of Kurt Vonnegut and what would have been his 100th birthday. These quotes that I'm sharing in this post remain incredibly relevant to today. Deep bow of respect, appreciation, and gratitude to the lasting contributions of Kurt Vonnegut. 🙏 Molly
In Honor of Kurt Vonnegut
Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.
Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.
I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.
I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.
* * * * *
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.
1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves... It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.
I'd like to teach Iraq about Democracy because we're so experienced with it. First they should know that after 100 years they should free their slaves. Then after 150 years they should give their women the right to vote. Oh, and of course when they start it all they should begin with some genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Hate, in the long run, is about as nourishing as cyanide.
While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.
* * * * *
Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
If people insist on living as if there's no tomorrow, there really won't be one.
Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
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.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
* * * * *
Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?
"Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.
It's perfectly ordinary to be a socialist. It's perfectly normal to be in favor of fire departments.
The
darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its
citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization
somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another
country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before
it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This
state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the
rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting
entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human
aborigines?
I don't know what's going on, and I'm probably not smart enough to understand if somebody was to explain it to me. All I know is we're being tested somehow, by somebody or some thing a whole lot smarter than us, and all I can do is be friendly and keep calm and try and have a nice time till it's over.
As stupid and vicious as men are, this is a lovely day.
* * * * *
Hello,
babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the
winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've
got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of,
babies - "God damn it, you've got to be kind."
You are better than you think.
And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.
It's a terrible waste to be happy and not notice it.
Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference.
About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which mean, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead.
I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves "Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment."
* * * * *
A society is only as healthy as its ideas are humane.
You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.
Unannounced changes in life's itinerary are like dancing lessons from God.
Truth can be really powerful stuff if you're not expecting it.
We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.
Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.
Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow.
Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
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