Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

I said that the only way I could have a band that would work in the format of my show is if the band were crap. So if I have a band they'd have to really suck.

Here I am, a not over-good business man, a second-rate engineer. I can make poor mechanical drawings. I play the piano after a fashion. In fact, I am one of those proverbial Jack-of-all-trades who are usually failures. Why I am not, I can't tell you.

I am, as I've said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.

Ninety percent of everything is crap.

If there's anything I hate more than a stupid action comedy, it's an incompetent stupid action comedy. It's not so bad it's good. It's so bad it's nothing else but bad.

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

The bar is so low in rap - mediocrity is king!

Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making.

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

Most of us pay some sort of price for screwing up. Quayle never has. His high school guidance counselor told him his grades were too low for admission to DePauw University, where his grandfather was a trustee and major donor, but he got in anyway. In college he flunked the departmental exam that was supposed to be a prerequisite to graduation, but he graduated anyway. Although it was 1969, the height of the Vietnam War, a year when more than a quarter million young men were drafted and other Indianans were being told it would take years to get into the National Guard, Quayle landed a spot in a week flat, after a retired Guard general who worked for his family made a call on his behalf. Quayle was rejected by Indiana University Law School, but he got in anyway- under an affirmative action program, after he visited the dean of admissions, a Republican judge in a city (Indianapolis) where Quayle’s grandfather owned the newspaper. (Soon thereafter, the grandfather made a large contribution to the law school.) Quayle was indifferent law student, but he got a job in the state attorney general’s office anyway. (His father made a few calls.) He was a twenty-nine year old employee of his father’s paper, but he got elected to Congress anyway, with the help of the paper and his own good looks. He was a poor congressman, but he got elected to Senate anyway, in the 1980 Reagan landslide. Two years later the DePauw faculty voted against giving him an honorary degree, but he got it anyway. He was a mediocre senator, but Bush put him on the national ticket anyway. He blew the debate, but he’ll probably be elected vice president anyway. At this rate he’ll be president by cherry blossom time.

Among the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

In general, the FBI investigative work I saw was of poor quality. The Bureau dealt excessively in rumor, gossip and conjecture.

If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

The blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Hillary Clinton cannot run away from her own record of incompetence or from the Obama record of abject betrayal.

If I had a pound for every former editor who hadn't cut the mustard advising me what to do, I'd be a very rich man.

Where incompetence is prized, it is ever-present.

I have done so many stupid commercials and terrible other little projects that never went anywhere and just ended up being terrible.

I don't get too much work to begin with, and whatever I get is mostly not good enough.

I hate amateurs. I hate unprofessional people. There are enough people who can do jobs decently that there's no reason that people who cannot do them decently [should] pretend to be great at it.

The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.

The price of loyalty is incompetence.

Those that can, do. Those that can't, complain.