Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

If the majority of people were right, we'd be living in paradise. But we are not living in paradise, we are living in hell. What does it mean? That means the majority of people are wrong. So I never believed what people told me.

If you keep saying two plus two equals five over and over again, then that is what people are going to think. Maybe it does equal five if we keep changing the definition of what's normal and what's right and what's wrong.

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

I never got good at predicting what millions of people will suddenly decide is rational.

When I left NSA, it was with an understanding that you can never underestimate the power of large numbers of stupid people.

. . .the larger the crowd, the more probable that that which it praises is folly, and the more improbable that it is truth; and the most improbable of all that it is any eternal truth.

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

Investors, most of them, have a herd mentality. They want to invest only if other people are investing

But what if our intelligence is wrong?

The capacity of this body for self delusion appears to this Senator to be unlimited.

What is seen being done by the many soon obtains the force of custom; while the affairs of men have scarcely ever been so well regulated that the better things pleased the majority. Therefore, the private vices of the many have often caused public error, or rather a general agreement on vices, which these good men now want to make law…

There is no more dangerous error than that of mistaking the effect for the cause.

Any order that can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood

Prejudices were deeply rooted; the people really believed themselves to be the richest of the world, even though they lived in destitution. They took the potentialities of the country for actual wealth.

I really hate misunderstandings - to a degree that it's hard for me to watch sitcoms, or any kind of funny movie where there's, like, this big mishap, or miscommunication. It gives me such anxiety that I almost can't make it through the movie.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.

I often tend to think that things are not what they seem.

If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word miracle. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle.

There can be an easy way to interpret things some times and it seems like maybe I'm on the wrong side of those interpretations a lot of those times.

I detest audiences. Not in their individual components but en masse... I think they are a force of evil.

Not to harp on too much about Ma, but it's a misconception that she is formidable. She calls herself a patsy.

Most people project onto you what they think you can do.

My biggest concern is people misunderstanding me.

If I saw a glass of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of it, I should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster philosophy might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me, and that the offer was not really what I conceived it to be.