Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

If you give up on politics, you give up on democracy … and then we are absolute plutocracy.

We... are not really free if we can't control our own government and its policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant.

Since an early age I was taught to be very politically aware and knew from childhood that the process was something I wanted to contribute towards if I could.

What kind of government is this? This is a human being. This is not right, and I'm telling everybody you better call your congressman, because they're going to run your life.

There are certain people within the new government who have a slightly disturbing tendency toward authoritarianism, but there are so many checks and balances that in that way their noises are just noises.

Man is by nature a political animal.

The Federal Government is exploiting public fear to redefine the relationship between the rulers and the American people.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

The church, inserted and active in human society and in history, does not exist in order to exercise political power or to govern the society.

If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

People in Oklahoma don't wake up every morning wondering what the government is going to do for them.

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

Civics is not only how to run the country before it's your turn to run the country; it is, in fact, the study of power, practical political power. And you must start that process at an age level when kids' brains are still open and malleable.

Our age gives the more receptive among the young such a sense of social responsibility that one is inclined at times to fear that social interests may encroach upon individual development, that a knowledge of all the ills affecting the community may act as too powerful a damper on the joys of youth.

I didn't wake up one morning and not be in the Replacements. We're all that forever, and I've just grown older. I mean, I haven't lost anything. I've gained a few things.

I'm just one of the kids, and all because the students at Hamilton Heights High School listened to the facts, educated their parents and themselves, and believed in me.

You can't do anything that's not political in this time and age.

Political life must be taken as you find it.

There is nothing that is not political.

It is not the same thing—society and government

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues ….

A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom—he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.

Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been found that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery..

Politics organizes our lives. We can't disregard it. Politics has lot of muck, lot of dirt. But that doesn't mean you have to be away from it. It's ubiquitous.

I went in with the youthful vigor that I could single-handedly change the world. But you fast come to the realization that you're 1/435th of one-half of one-third of the government.