Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

I don't like war. I particularly don't like the celebration of war, which I think the administration is a little bit guilty of.

From a very young age, militarism and trying to solve the world's problems through militarism is something that has always resonated with me as being a bad idea.

Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn't have as many monuments to unveil.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

The South does not understand anything but the language of the gun.

There is now all this patriotic indignation about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Japanese expansionism in Asia. Yet not a word about American and European expansionism in the same area.... We must make a start. We must renounce war as an instrument of policy.... Even as I speak to you I may be guilty of what some men call treason.... You young men should refuse to take up arms. Young women tear down the patriotic posters. And all of you — young and old — put away your flags.

Let us wage a moral and political war against war itself, so that we can cut military spending and use that money for human needs.

I was in Kenya when I read 'Catch-22,' and I associate this book that has nothing to do with Kenya - whenever I think of 'Catch-22,' I think of Nairobi.

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

Much of the blame is the malarkey that artists have created to glorify war, which as we all know, is nonsense, and a good deal worse than that — romantic pictures of battle, and of the dead and men in uniform and all that. And I did not want to have that story told again.

When a new post-war generation has grown to puberty and to youth and to manhood and womanhood, it should read, and it should be realistically told, of the futility, the idiocy, the utter depravity of war. For that matter, this instruction could begin at the age of six with the taking of those toy guns out of those toy holsters and throwing them in the ash-cans where they belong.

my sweet old etcetera aunt lucy during the recent war could and what is more did tell you just what everybody was fighting for, my sister isabel created hundreds (and hundreds) of socks not to mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers etcetera wristers etcetera, my mother hoped that i would die etcetera bravely of course my father used to become hoarse talking about how it was a privilege and if only he could meanwhile my self etcetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of Your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternatinve service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war.

At the bottom of all patriotism there is war: that is why I am no patriot.

What I hated even more than the conflict was the lurid spectacle of a world of unreason.

When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, it loses its social perspective.... There is something about a war like this that makes people insensitive. It dulls the conscience. It strengthens the forces of reaction, and it brings into being bitterness and hatred and violence.

This subject brings me to that vilest offspring of the herd mind -- the odious militia. The man who enjoys marching in line and file to the strains of music falls below my contempt; he received his great brain by mistake -- the spinal cord would have been amply sufficient. This heroism at command, this senseless violence, this accursed bombast of patriotism -- how intensely I despise them! War is low and despicable, and I had rather be smitten to shreds than participate in such doings.

I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war.

I'm against war. Always have been, always will be. And everything connected with it, is anathema to me. I have never considered it necessary.

I never justify, sustain, or in any way or to any extent uphold this cruel, heartless, aimless unnecessary war.

Mother Teresa was brilliant. She said, “I will never attend an anti-war rally. If you have a peace rally, invite me.” She knew. She understood the secret. Look what she manifested in the world.

Right after we invaded Iraq, I put a sign on my lawn that said "War is not the answer." That sign was either defaced, ripped up, or stolen every week. I had to replace that sign twelve times.

But if we come back, if German men come back, if British men come back, and Japs, and French, and all the other men, all of us talking, writing, painting, making movies of heroes, and cockroaches and foxholes and blood, then future generations will always be doomed to future Hitlers. It's never occurred to boys to have contempt for wars, to point to soldiers' pictures in history books, laughing at them. If German boys had learned to be contemptuous of violence, Hitler would have had to take up knitting to keep his ego warm.

A toast to the weapons of war, may they rust in peace.

War is capitalism with the gloves off and many who go to war know it but they go to war because they don't want to be a hero.