"It was an appalling thought, to be so well-integrated into the machinery of society and history as to be able to move in only one plane, and along one line."

Kurt Vonnegut Literature See all quotes by Kurt Vonnegut →

React to this quote

More by Kurt Vonnegut

“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we … dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything. Piece of cake.”

“Well, I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president.”

“I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That’s why we’ve got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.”

“The new heroism — put a village idiot into a pressure cooker, seal it up tight, and shoot him at the moon.”

“Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.”

Resonant Thoughts

"The surrealist thinks he has outstripped the whole of literary history when he has written where others have written "jasmines, swans and fauns." But what he has really done has been simply to bring t…"

— José Ortega y Gasset

Philosophy1883–1955

#history

"I propose hermeneutic communism: non-dogmatic communism, weak communism. Only this can save us. without essences, without absolutes to be realized at all costs. It is only an ideal of equitable societ…"

— Gianni Vattimo

Philosophy1936–2023

#change

"On December 16th, 1961 the world turned upside down and inside out, and I was born screaming at America. It was the tail end of the American Dream. Just before we lost our innocence irrevocably when t…"

— Bill Hicks

Philosophy1940–1994

#life

"If you could only imprison a thought, then intellectual tyranny might succeed. If you could only take an argument and put a striped suit of clothes on it -- if you could only take a good, splendid shi…"

— Robert G. Ingersoll

Law1833–1899

#mind