Kurt Vonnegut citáty

strana 4

„Kouření je jediný čestný způsob sebevraždy.“

„Lidé mají pořád o čem mluvit, aby si udrželi hlasový fond v pořádku pro případ, že by je někdy napadlo něco skutečně závažného.“

„Není důvodu, proč by dobro nemohlo zvítězit nad zlem, jen se musí andělé zorganizovat po způsobu mafie.“

„Užívej si v životě malých věcí, jednoho dne se ohlédneš zpět a zjistíš, že byly velké.“

„Kilgore Trout kdysi napsal povídku, která byla dialogem mezi dvěma kvasinkami. Pojídaly cukr, dusily se ve vlastních výkalech a diskutovaly při tom o smyslu života. Vzhledem k jejich omezené inteligenci jim nikdy nepřišlo na mysl, že vlastně vyrábějí šampaňské.“

„Krok zpátky poté, kdy sejdete z cesty, je krok správným směrem.“

„Mám pocit, že lidi prostě kašlou na to, jestli se tahle planeta bude točit dál, nebo ne.“

„Socialismus není slovo o nic zlověstnější než křesťanství. Socialismus nepředpisuje Josefa Stalina a jeho tajnou policii a zrušené kostely o nic více, než křesťanství předpisuje španělskou inkvizici. Jak křesťanství, tak socialismus ve skutečnosti předepisují společnost založenou na přesvědčení, že všichni muži, ženy i děti jsou stvořeni jako sobě rovni a nemají hladovět.“

„Chcete něco vědět? Pořád ještě žijeme v temném středověku. Temný středověk totiž ještě neskončil.“

„Knihy člověka učí imaginaci. Ti z nás, kteří nemají ve svých hlavách okruhy imaginace zničené informačními dálnicemi, se podívají do něčí tváře a vidí příběhy. Pro všechny ostatní je obličej prostě jen obličejem.“

„Tady máte lekci tvůrčího psaní. Pravidlo jedna – nepoužívejte středníky. Jsou to hermafrodití transvestité reprezentující absolutně nic. Jediné, co ukazují, je to, že jste chodili do školy“

„Mám jisté zkušenosti s láskou, nebo si to aspoň myslím, ačkoli moje největší lásky by se klidně daly popsat jako "obyčejná slušnost." Krátce nebo i hodně dlouho jsem s někým slušně zacházel a on na oplátku slušně zacházel se mnou. Láska s tím nemusela mít nic společného.“

„Evoluce je strašně tvořivá. To jen díky ní máme žirafy a kapavku.“

„Jsme to, co předstíráme, že jsme, a tak musíme být na to, co předstíráme, že jsme, opatrní.“

„To, že někteří z nás umí číst a psát a trochu počítat, ještě neznamená, že si zasloužíme dobýt vesmír.“

„Vědy, to jsou kouzla, která fungují.“

„Neobvyklé cestovní návrhy jsou tanečními lekcemi od Boha.“

„Tady jsme. Zataveni v jantaru tohoto okamžiku. Není žádné proč.“

„Pozdní dvacáté století se podle mne určitě zapíše do dějin jako éra farmaceutické klauniády. Můj vlastní bratr se vrátil z New Yorku s hlavou vybombardovanou Darvonem a Ritalinem a Methaqualonem a Valiem a Bůh ví čím ještě. Měl předpisy na jednu každou věc z tohohle seznamu. Řekl, že se vrací domů objevit své kořeny, ale když jsem uslyšel o všech těch pilulkách, napadlo mě, že bude mít štěstí, nahmátne-li si oběma rukama zadek. Napadlo mě, že byl vůbec zázrak, že našel správný sjezd z mezistátky.“

„Přál bych si, abych se raději narodil jako pták,“ řekl. „Přál bych si, abychom se raději všichni narodili jako ptáci.“

„Blížím se ke svým padesátým narozeninám, pane Troute," řekl jsem. "Uklízím sám v sobě a obrozuju se pro léta, která přijdou teď a která budou zcela jiná. Za podobných duševních okolností dal hrabě Tolstoj svobodu svým nevolníkům, Thomas Jefferson svobodu svým otrokům. Já hodlám propustit všechny literární postavy, jež mi tak oddaně sloužili za mé spisovatelské kariéry. Jste jediný, komu to říkám. Pro ostatní bude dnešní noc jako každá jiná. Povstaňte pane Troute, jste svoboden, jste svoboden.“

„Tohle byla totiž skrznaskrz neškodná planeta, až na ty děsně veliké mozky.“

„Všem dosud nenarozeným, všem nevinným chumáčům beztvaré nicoty: Pozor na život.“

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”

“Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.”

“I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency."”

“Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.”

“Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles away from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.
Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes.
And everyday my government gives me a count of corpses created by the military service in Vietnam. So it goes.
My father died many years ago now — of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.”

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”

“We've sure come a long way since then. Sometimes I wish we hadn't. I hate H-bombs and the Jerry Springer show.”

“The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, "There's a Chaplain who never visited the front."”

“The controls were anything but a hunch-player’s delight in a Universe composed of one-trillionth part matter to one decillion parts black velvet futility.”

“A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.”

“Things die. All things die.”

“I never knew a writer's wife who wasn't beautiful.”

“One of the great American tragedies is to have participated in a just war. It's been possible for politicians and movie-makers to encourage us we're always good guys. The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of.”

“I don't care if I'm remembered or not when I'm dead. (A scientist I knew at General Electric, who was married to a woman named Josephine, said to me, "Why should I buy life insurance? If I die, I won't care what's happening to Jo. I won't care about anything. I'll be dead.")”

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

“Congressman Nixon had asked me why, as the son of immigrants who had been treated so well by Americans, as a man who had been treated like a son and been sent to Harvard by an American capitalist, I had been so ungrateful to the American economic system.
The answer I gave him was not original. Nothing about me has ever been original. I repeated what my one-time hero, Kenneth Whistler, had said in reply to the same general sort of question long, long ago. Whistler had been a witness at a trial of strikers accused of violence. The judge had become curious about him, had asked him why such a well-educated man from such a good family would so immerse himself in the working class.
My stolen answer to Nixon was this: "Why? The Sermon on the Mount, sir."”

“Hey — guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?”

“These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth—a nightmare of meaningless without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions.
Only inwardness remained to be explored.
Only the human soul remained terra incognita.
This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom.”

“Rumfoord had known that Constant would try to debase the picture by using it in commerce. Constant’s father had done a similar thing when he found he could not buy Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” at any price. The old man had punished Mona Lisa by having her used in an advertising campaign for suppositories. It was the free-enterprise way of handling beauty that threatened to get the upper hand.”

“My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."”

“I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That’s why we’ve got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.”

“The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority.”

“Dear Reader: The title of this book is composed of three words from my novel Cat's Cradle. A wampeter is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. Foma are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: "Prosperity is just around the corner." A granfalloon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings. Taken together, the words form as good an umbrella as any for this collection of some of the reviews and essays I've written, a few of the speeches I made.”

“The riot, then, was an exercise in science and theology—a seeking after clues by the living as to what life was all about.”

“I hadn't aimed at anything. If I had thought of the bullet's hitting anything, I don't remember now. I was the great marksman, anyway. If I aimed at nothing, then nothing is what I would hit. The bullet was a symbol, and nobody was ever hurt by a symbol. It was a farewell to my childhood and a confirmation of my manhood. Why didn't I use a blank cartridge? What kind of a symbol would that have been?”

“We're having a celebration, so all sorts of things have been said which are not true," I said. "That's how to act at a party.”

“I think yet again of my father, who struggled to become a painter after he was forced into early and unwelcome retirement by the Great Depression. He has reason to be optimistic about his new career, since the early stages of his pictures, whether still or portraits or landscapes, were full of pow. Mother, meaning to be helpful, would say of each one: "That's really wonderful, Kurt. Now all you have to do is finish it." He would then ruin it. I remember a portrait he did of his only brother, Alex, who was an insurance salesman, which he called "Special Agent". When he roughed it in, his hand and eye conspired with a few bold strokes to capture several important truths about Alex, including a hint of disappointment. Uncle Alex was a proud graduate of Harvard, who would rather have been a scholar of literature than an insurance man.
When Father finished the portrait, made sure every square inch of masonite had its share of paint, Uncle Alex had disappeared entirely. We had a drunk and lustful Queen Victoria instead. This was terrible.”

“I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”

“During my controlled near-death experiences, I’ve met Sir Isaac Newton, who died back in 1727 as often as I’ve met Saint Peter. They both hang out at the Heaven end of the blue tunnel of the Afterlife. Saint Peter is there because it’s his job. Sir Isaac is there because of his insatiable curiosity about what the blue tunnel is, how the blue tunnel works.
It isn’t enough for Newton that during his eighty-five years on Earth he invented calculus, codified and quantified the laws of gravity, motion and optics, and designed the first reflecting telescope. He can’t forgive himself for having left it to Darwin to come up with the theory of evolution, to Pasteur to come up with the germ theory, and to Albert Einstein to come up with relativity. “I must have been deaf, dumb, and blind not to have come up with those myself,” he said to me. “What could have been more obvious?””