Quotes From "Hocus Pocus" By Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

He was talking about the sign that said 'THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.''All knew was that I didn't want my daughter or anybody's child to see a message that negative every time she comes into the library, ' he said. 'And then I found out it was you who was responsible for it.'' What's so negative about it?' I said.' What could be a more negative word than "futility"?' he said.'" Ignorance, "' I said. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Usually when people talk about the trickle-down theory, it has to do with economics. The richer people at the top of a society become, supposedly, the more wealth there is to trickle down to the people below. It never really works out that way, of course, because if there are 2 things people at the top can't stand, they have to be leakage and overflow. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an experiment. They put the idea into Earthlings' heads that the whole Universe had been created by one big animal who looked just like them. He sat on a throne with a lot of less fancy thrones all around him. When people died they got to sit on those other thrones forever because they were such close relatives of the Creator.The people down here just ate that up! . Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The library is full of stories of supposed triumphs which makes me very suspicious of it. It's misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

So what indeed! The lesson I myself learned over and over again when teaching at the college and then the prison was the uselessness of information to most people, except as entertainment. If facts weren't funny or scary, or couldn't make you rich, the heck with them. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

That's the point. Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. So people getting married think they're wonderful, and that they're going to have a baby-- that's wonderful, when actually they're as ugly as rhinoceroses. Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The troops and their ladies had first drunk champagne. There were also remains of sandwiches, and I stepped on one, which I think was either cucumber or watercress. I scraped it off on the curbing, left it there for germs. I'll tell you this, though: No germ is going to leave the Solar System eating sissy stuff like that. Plutonium! Now there's the stuff to put hair on a microbe's chest. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I am not writing this book for people below the age of 18, but I see no harm in telling young people to prepare for failure rather than success, since failure is the main thing that is going to happen to them. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

...we took the 10 machines we agreed were the most beguiling, and we put them on permanent exhibit in the foyer of this library underneath a sign whose words can surely be applied to this whole ruined planet nowadays: THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

My own feeling is that if adultery is wickedness then so is food. Both make me feel so much better afterward. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Sometimes Alton Darwin would talk to me about the planet he was on before he was transported in a steel box to Athena. 'Drugs were food, ' he said. 'I was in the food business. Just because people on one planet eat a certain kind of food they're hungry for, that makes them feel better after they eat it, that doesn't mean people on other planets shouldn't eat something else. On some planets I'm sure there are people who eat stones, and then feel wonderful for a little while afterwords. Then it's time to eat stones again. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Every so often, in the midst of chaos, you come across an amazing, inexplicable instance of civic responsibility. Maybe the last shred of faith people have is in their firemen. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It couldn't have been gonorrhea, which never stops eating you up of its own accord. Why should it ever stop of its own accord? It's having such a nice time. Why call off the party? Look how healthy and happy the kids are. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

He hadn't killed nearly as many people as I had. But then again, he hadn't had my advantage, which was the full cooperation of our Government. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.