Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

Human beings are a social species. We like to hang together in groups, just like wildebeests, just like lions. Wildebeests don't hang with lions because lions eat wildebeests. Human beings are like that. We do what that group does that we're trying to identify with.

I don't see tribalism ever really disappearing entirely. I just think that people are almost hardwired to identify as groups. And that sort of group identity always runs the risk of being chauvinistic.

It's always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That's just in human relationships.

Tribal affiliation is much more important than policy details.

It's not just human nature to associate in tribes. It's deeper than that.

I think it's just in human nature: if you've got two guys fighting, and you don't really know them, you're going to root for the guy who comes from your country.

Nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere.

Everybody tends to merge his identity with other people at the speed of light. It's called being mass man.

I don't belong to any side. What's more, I think flags are nothing but painted rags that represent rancid emotions. Just seeing someone wrapped up in one of them, spewing out hymns, badges and speeches, gives me the runs. I've always thought that anyone who needs to join a herd so badly must be a bit of a sheep himself

Every ethnic group thinks they are the chosen ones.

But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.

I think when there's so much information to be eaten up, and so many ways to do it, people cling to groups. I think we, as monkeys, want to live in smaller groups.

I think the fact that us as a race still continues to be very tribal and we haven't really moved away from that over hundreds and hundreds of years of experience.

I've got one of Darwin's books at home and some of that stuff is pretty damn funny. Some of his stuff is true, like that the giraffe has a long neck so it can reach the leaves. But I just don't think you can swallow the whole piece.

I also think that there's a little peer pressure. They probably think that a majority of people their age think the same things and they want to be considered - I don't know what the word is - in, hip, whatever, with that bunch. I think time will take care of some of this as it is revealed that [Donald] Trump is not what they think.

If evolution was worth its salt, it should've evolved something better than 'survival of the fittest.' I think a better idea would be 'survival of the wittiest.' At least, that way, creatures that didn't survive could've died laughing.

Human beings never think for themselves. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

The beauty of being black in American society is that black has always been an inclusive definition. White has always been an exclusive definition. I think one of the challenges for white people is to figure out how to have a more inclusive picture of who their families are, of who they are.

We, who think like animals living in small groups, must structure a global world. We believe in universal human rights and believe racism and war are wrong. On the other hand, it is our nature to be cooperative and loving almost exclusively with the members of the group to which we feel we belong.

Tens of millions of Americans who neither know or understand the actual arguments for, or even against, evolution, march in the Army of the Night with their Bibles held high

No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.

They felt that science would be corrosive to religious belief and they were worried about it. Damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive to religious belief and it's a good thing.

If multiculturalism succeeds in making us a nation of independently empowered tribes, each tribe will be deprived of the comfort of victimhood and be forced to confront human limitation for what it is: a fixture of life.

If anybody wants to believe they're the descendants of a primate, they're welcome to do it.

We humans are herd animals of the monkey tribe, not natural individuals as lions are. Our individuality is partial and restless; the stream of consciousness that we call 'I' is made of shifting elements that flow from our group and back to our group again. Always we seek to be ourselves and the herd together, not One against the herd.