Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or about any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide.

Wyndham Lewis is basically a pessimist, thinking of human beings as doomed animals or determinist machines. His theory of satire is based on this view, and he finds plenty of evidence to support it in contemporary practice.

I hate to think life is just facts and laws.

We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

If you don't ponder the end of the world on a regular basis, I don't think you're really human.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice.

I was absolutely blown away when I first talked to Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan at how ambitious they wanted 'Westworld' to be in looking at the drives that are leading human beings over the cliff of existence.

I'm a Nietzschean scholar. I've read an immense amount about nihilism and existentialism.

I'm not a machine.

Starting with the lyrics, 'Only scared of myself and the truth in the stars/I'm a king, I'm the dirt, God within me shine,' the first half of '6 Weeks' delves into my attempts to balance the notion that I have an existential purpose with the realization that I am nothing against the vastness of the universe.

How terrifying and glorious the role of man if, indeed, without guidance and without consolation he must create from his own vitals the meaning for his existence and write the rules whereby he lives.

for in the absence of God he had found Man. Man killing man, man helping man, both of them anonymous: the scourge and the blessing.

Man has always been half-monster, half-dreamer.

What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.

What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.

The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.

It may be that there was no reason or purpose, for mankind must always be finding reasons where there are none, and comfort in a purpose that hardly exists.

Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition.

Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence

Death is part of who we are. It guides us. It shapes us. It drives us to madness. Can you still be human if you have no mortal end

A man who says that men are machines may be a great scientist. A man who says he is a machine is 'depersonalized' in psychiatric jargon.

What is man that his welfare be considered? An ape who chatters of kinship with the archangels while he very filthily digs for groundnuts. And yet I perceive that this same man is a maimed God. He is condemned under penalty to measure eternity with an hourglass and infinity with a yardstick and what is more, he very nearly does it.

What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instinct of beasts.