“Do you realize that all great literature — "Moby Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," "A Farewell to Arms," "The Scarlet Letter," "The Red Badge of Courage," "The Iliad and The Odyssey," "Crime and Punishment," the Bible, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" — are all about what a bummer it is to be a ...human being?”

“Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?”

“If there is to be no ceiling on the amount of money a man can take out of our economy, then concomitantly there can be no foundation below which a human being cannot sink. What capitalists must realize is that you are fighting to make capitalism survive, not destroy it; you are fighting to eliminate the seeds of destruction inherent in the status quo."~Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's letter to Don Matchan, 27 April 1947”

“I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair.”

“Human beings used to be molecules which could do many, many different sorts of dances, or decline to dance at all --as they pleased. My mother could do the waltz, the tango, the rumba....”

“And here, according to Trout, was the reason human beings could not reject ideas because they were bad: "Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity. "The ideas Earthlings held didn't matter for hundreds of thousands of years, since they couldn't do much about them anyway. Ideas might as well be badges as anything."They even had a saying about the futility of ideas: 'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.' "And then Earthlings discovered tools. Suddenly agreeing with friends could be a form of suicide or worse. But agreements went on, not for the sake of common sense or decency or self-preservation, but for friendliness."Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead. And even when they built computers to do some thinking for them, they designed them not so much for wisdom as for friendliness. So they were doomed. Homicidal beggars could ride.”

“It was not heartbroken rage against injustice that froze me. I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair.”