Cat S Cradle Quotes

“Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“A pissant is somebody who thinks he’s so damn smart, he can never keep his mouth shut. No matter what anybody says, he’s got to argue with it. You say you like something, and, by God, he’ll tell you why you’re wrong to like it. A pissant does his best to make you feel like a boob all the time. No matter what you say, he knows better.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“It's nice to be nice.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Why should I bother with made-up games when there are so many real ones going on?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Son,' my father said to me, 'someday this will all be yours.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“And you think things will be better in San Lorenzo?"
"I know damn well they will be. The people down there are poor enough and scared enough and ignorant enough to have some common sense!”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“The mind reels.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“The fortifications have never been attacked, nor has any sane man ever proposed any reason why they should be attacked. They have never defended anything. Fourteen hundred persons are said to have died while building them. Of these fourteen hundred, about half are said to have been executed in public for substandard zeal.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“As I say, all all he wanted from the manuscript was the string. That was the way he was. Nobody could predict what he was going to be interested in next. On the day of the bomb it was string. [...] He had no use at all for tricks and games and rules that other people made up.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“For maybe a hundred thousand years or more, grownups have been waving tangles of string in their children's faces."
"Um."
Newt remained curled in the chair. He held out his painty hands as though a cat's cradle were strung between them. "No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's..."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“What is sacred to Bokononists?" I asked after a while.
"Not even God, as near as I can tell."
"Nothing?"
"Just one thing."
I made some guesses. "The ocean? The sun?"
"Man," said Frank. "That's all. Just man.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

“Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokonists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

But all I could say as a Christian then was, "Life is sure funny sometimes."

"And sometimes it isn't," said Marvin Breed.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Now I will destroy the whole world.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Are you a Bokononist?" I asked him.

"I agree with one Bokononist idea. I agree that all religions, including Bokononism, are nothing but lies.”
― Kurt Vonnegut