Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

At the end, the key thing is you've got to live with yourself. That's the real test. Everything else is fleeting.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

I love talking about myself.

I find that I don't lie about the big things in life. The things that matter. And about me. While I'm talking about myself, I rarely lie: I know who I am, my level of talent, that I'm not the most versatile filmmaker, the person I am. I don't lie about myself because I don't lie to myself.

Politics is challenging for everyone's integrity... I have to wake up with myself every morning, and I have to be OK with the person I wake up with. If I string together too many days of waking up with a person I'm not happy to be, I have a lot bigger things at stake in my life than an election or a job.

I am not immersed in self-admiration.

It's very hard to look at the man in the mirror. Because you can't hide anything.

One is honest about oneself either with a sense of shame or with vanity.

Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.

If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am?

Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to know the answers.

It is as commendable to think well of oneself when alone, as it is ridiculous to speak well of oneself among others.

I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.

Since we think about ourselves so much of the time, it is comforting to assume ... that we really know the score.... [But] this is not an easy assignment. [As] Santayana wrote, 'Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one's equation written out.'

I have talked quite long enough about my own follies. The thing is to finish the thing as devised and then let it be judged. But forgive me! It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I can no other.

If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. But he is harmed who abideth on still in his deception and ignorance.

Self-respecting people do not care to peep at their reflections in unexpected mirrors, or to see themselves as others see them.

I think that deprecation part is a very important aspect because when someone looks into themselves, if they're going to be honest, they're going to see parts that are humiliating as well as parts that they might feel really great about. Take Lucas Samaras again, who made a lot of self-portraits. He makes one self-portrait where he is looking directly into the camera and looks so intense and cool. He says in an interview, "I wanted to present the best version of myself."

Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.

But if thought is to become the possession of many, not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men back - fear lest their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear lest they themselves should prove less worthy of respect than they have supposed themselves to be.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself. It is no humility for a man to think less of himself than he ought.

A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.--What was that god thinking who counseled, "Know thyself!" Did he perhaps mean,"Cease to concern yourself! Become objective!"--And Socrates?--And "scientific men"?

I have never known a greater miracle, or monster, than myself.

I think the appropriate kind of skepticism is this: you've got to be asking questions all the time, you've also got to make sure that you're doing so in the spirit of genuinely wanting to find the answers - and that also means being open. I battle with this: I know I tend to be very skeptical and as a result, I veer towards the dismissive. But being aware of the tendency, I like to challenge my own skepticism and make sure it's not just knee-jerk. You need to be skeptical towards yourself as well. When you're only skeptical outwards you've got an unbalanced skepticism.