Player Piano Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.

The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings," said Paul, "not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems.

Those who live by electronics, die by electronics. Sic semper tyrannis.

Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. [...] Big, undreamed-of things--the people on the edge see them first.

Don't put one foot in your job and the other in your dream, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It's just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you've made up your mind which way to go.

If it weren't for the people, the god-damn people' said Finnerty, 'always getting tangled up in the machinery. If it weren't for them, the world would be an engineer's paradise.

You think I'm insane?" said Finnerty. Apparently he wanted more of a reaction than Paul had given him. "You're still in touch. I guess that's the test." "Barely — barely." "A psychiatrist could help. There's a good man in Albany." Finnerty shook his head. "He'd pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." He nodded, "Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.

That man's got a lot of get up and go," said Anita. "He fills me full of lie down and die," said Paul.

Anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave," said Harrison thickly, and he left.

Nobody’s so damn well educated that you can’t learn ninety per cent of what he knows in six weeks. The other ten per cent is decoration.

It isn't knowledge that's making trouble, but the uses it's put to.

Almost nobody’s competent, Paul. It’s enough to make you cry to see how bad most people are at their jobs. If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.

He would make a good lamp post if he'd weather better and didn't have to eat.

Sordid things, for the most part, are what make human beings, my father included, move. That's what it is to be human, I'm afraid.

Don't you see, Doctor?" said Lasher. "The machines are to practically everbody what the white men were to the Indians. People are finding that, because of the way the machines are changing the world, more and more of their old values don't apply any more. People have no choice but to become second-rate machines themselves, or wards of the machines.

He watched his brother find peace of mind through psychiatry. That’s why he won’t have anything to do with it. I don’t follow. Isn’t his brother happy? Utterly and always happy. And my husband says somebody’s just got to be maladjusted; that somebody’s got to be uncomfortable enough to wonder where people are, where they’re going, and why they’re going there.

What do you expect?" he said. "For generations they've been built up to worship competition and the market, productivity and economic usefulness, and the envy of their fellow men-and boom! it's all yanked out from under them. They can't participate, can't be useful any more. Their whole culture's been shot to hell.

Well, it just don’t seem like nobody feels he’s worth a crap to nobody no more, and it’s a hell of a screwy thing, people gettin’ buggered by things they made theirselves.

The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings,

Not slaves,” said Halyard, chuckling patronizingly. “Citizens, employed by government.

Ilium, New York, is divided into three parts.

I have graded my separate works from A to D. The grades I hand out to myself do not place me in literary history. I am comparing myself with myself. Thus can I give myself an A-plus for Cat’s Cradle, while knowing that there was a writer named William Shakespeare. The report card is chronological, so you can plot my rise and fall on graph paper, if you like: Player Piano B The Sirens of Titan A Mother Night A Cat’s Cradle A-plus God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater A Slaughterhouse-Five A-plus Welcome to the Monkey House B-minus Happy Birthday, Wanda June D Breakfast of Champions C Wampeters, Foma & Grandfalloons C Slapstick D Jailbird A Palm Sunday C

But there’s two kinds of work, kid, work and hard work. If you want to stand out, have something to sell, you got to do hard work. Pick out something impossible and do it, or be a bum the rest of your life.

And the charming little cottage he'd taken as a symbol of the good life of a farmer was as irrelevant as a statue of Venus at the gate of a sewage-disposal plant.

He said goodbye and good luck, and that some of the greatest prophets were crazy as bedbugs.

...three thousand dream houses for three thousand families with presumably identical dreams.

Things, gentlemen, are ripe for a phony Messiah, and when he comes, it's sure to be a bloody business.

And the lawyers! Of course, I say it’s a pretty good thing what happened to them, because it was a bad thing for them, which couldn’t help to be a good thing for everybody else.

Everything you think you think because somebody promoted the ideas. Education—nothing but promotion.

It was a beautifully simple picture these procession leaders had. It was as though a navigator, in order to free his mind of worries, had erased all the reefs from his maps." - Chapter 21

But, to Shepherd, life seemed to be laid out like a golf course, with a series of beginnings, hazards, and ends, and with a definite summing up—for comparison with others scores—after each hole.

Well, you know, in a way I wish I hadn't met you two. It's much more convenient to think of the opposition as a nice homogeneous, dead-wrong mass. Now I've got to muddy my thinking with exceptions.

He knew with all his heart that the human situation was a frightful botch, but it was such a logical, intelligently arrived-at botch that he couldn't see how history could possibly have led anywhere else.

You think I'm insane?" said Finnerty. Apparently he wanted more of a reaction than Paul had given him. "You're still in touch. I Guess that's the test." "Barely-barely." "A psychiatrist could help. There's a good man in Albany." Finnerty shook his head. "He'd pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out there on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center." He nodded, "Big, undreamed-of things--the people on the edge see them first.

Without regard for the wishes of men, any machines or techniques or forms of organization that can economically replace men do replace men. Replacement is not necessarily bad, but to do it without regard for the wishes of men is lawlessness.

I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to be classified as one, so I wondered in what way I'd offended that I would not get credit for being a serious writer. I decided that it was because I wrote about technology, and most fine American writers know nothing about technology. I got classified as a science fiction writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady, New York. My first book, Player Piano, was about Schenectady. There are huge factories in Schenectady and nothing else. I and my associates were engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. And when I wrote about the General Electric Company and Schenectady, it seemed a fantasy of the future to critics who had never seen the place.

It was an archaic expression of friendship by an undisciplined man in an age when most men seemed in mortal fear of being mistaken for pansies for even a split second.

It’s just a hell of a time to be alive,

They had been the rioters, the smashers of machines.

The machines are to practically everybody what the white men were to the Indians. People are finding that, because of the way the machines are changing the world, more and more of their old values don’t apply any more. People have no choice but to become second-rate machines themselves, or wards of the machines.

To the people who were going to be replaced by machines, maybe. A third one, eh? In a way, I guess the third one’s been going on for some time, if you mean thinking machines. That would be the third revolution, I guess—machines that devaluate human thinking. Some of the big computers like EPICAC do that all right, in specialized fields.

Of course you’re right. It’s just a hell of a time to be alive, is all—just this goddamn messy business of people having to get used to new ideas. And people just don’t, that’s all. I wish this were a hundred years from now, with everybody used to the change.

The Sovereignty of the United States resides in the people, not in the machines, and it's the people's to take back, if they so wish. The machines," said Paul, "have exceeded the personal sovereignty willingly surrendered to them by the American people for the good government. Machines and organization and pursuit of efficiency have robbed the American people of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

If Checker Charley was out to make chumps out of men, he could damn well fix his own connections. Paul looks after his own circuits; let Charley do the same. Those who live by electronics, die by electronics. Sic semper tyrannis.” He gathered up the bills from the table. “Good night.

Yesterday’s snow job becomes today’s sermon.

And what does an anthropologist do these days?" sad Paul. "Same thing a supernumerary minister does--becomes a public charge, a bore, or possibly a rum-dum, or a bureaucrat.

Sordid things, for the most part, are what make human beings, my father included, move. That's what it is to be human, I'm afraid.

If only it weren’t for the people, the goddamned people,” said Finnerty, “always getting tangled up in the machinery. If it weren’t for them, earth would be an engineer’s paradise.

Those who live by electronics, die by electronics. Sic semper tyrannis.

Objectively, know-how and world law were getting their long-awaited chance to turn earth into an altogether pleasant and convenient place in which to sweat out Judgment Day.

It's fresh to you because you're too young to know anything but the way things are now. Actually, it is kind of incredible that things were ever any other way, isn't it?

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.

Anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave,” said Harrison thickly, and he left.

beaters of systems had always been admired by the conventional.

The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings,” said

the First Industrial Revolution devalued muscle work, then the second one devalued routine mental work. I was fascinated.

But you find out quick enough that old friends are old friends, and nothing more—no wiser, no more help than anyone else.

I’m going to get myself a uniform, so I’ll know what I think and stand for.

He remembered his cry of the night before: We must meet in the middle of the Bridge!

When he was with Finnerty he liked to pretend that he shared the man’s fantastic and alternately brilliant or black inner thoughts—almost as though he were discontent with his own relative tranquility.

Sooner or later someone's going to catch the imagination of these people with some new magic. At the bottom of it will be a promise of regaining the feeling of participation, the feeling of being neede on earth - hell, dignity. The police are bright enough to look for people like that, and lock them up under the antisabotage laws. But sooner or later someone's going keep out of thei site long enough to organize a following.

At this point in history, 1952 A.D., our lives and freedom depend largely upon the skill and imagination and courage of our managers and engineers, and I hope that God will help them to help us all stay alive and free.

The record," said Finnerty, and he seemed satisfied with the toast. He had got what he wanted from the revolution, Paul supposed--a chance to give a savage blow to a close little society that made no comfortable place for him.

He hadn't had the satisfaction of telling someone he'd quit, of being believed; but he'd quit. Goodbye. None of this had anything to do with him anymore. Better to be nothing than a blind doorman at the head of civilization's parade.

This crusading spirit of the managers and engineers, the idea of designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort of a holy war: all that folklore was cooked up by public relations and advertising men hired by managers and engineers to make big business popular in the old days, which it certainly wasn't in the beginning. Now, the engineers and managers believe with all their hearts the glorious things their forebears hired people to say about them. Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon.

Lasher smiled sadly. "The great American indvidual," he said. "Thinks he's the embodiment of liberal thought throughout the ages. Stands on his own two feet, by God, alone and motionless. He'd make a good lamp post, if he'd weather better and didn't have to eat.

You keep giving the managers and engineers a bad time," said Paul. "What about the scientists? It seems to me that -" "Outside the discussion," said Lasher impatiently. "They simply add to knowledge. It isn't knowledge that's making trouble, but the uses it's put to.

And another nice thing about war—not that anything about war is nice, I guess—is that while it’s going on and you’re in it, you never worry about doing the right thing. See? Up there, fighting and all, you couldn’t be righter. You could of been a heller at home and made a lot of people unhappy and all, and been a dumb, mean bastard, but you’re king over there—king to everybody, and especially to yourself. This above all, be true to yourself, and you can’t be false to anybody else, and that’s it—in a hole, being shot at and shooting back.

Call yourself a doctor, too, do you?” said Mr. Haycox. “I think I can say without fear of contradiction that I earned that degree,” said Doctor Pond coolly. “My thesis was the third longest in any field in the country that year—eight hundred and ninety-six pages, double-spaced, with narrow margins.” “Real-estate salesman,” said Mr. Haycox. He looked back and forth between Paul and Doctor Pond, waiting for them to say something worth his attention. When they’d failed to rally after twenty seconds, he turned to go. “I’m doctor of cowshit, pigshit, and chickenshit,” he said. “When you doctors figure out what you want, you’ll find me out in the barn shoveling my thesis.

That’s just it: things haven’t always been that way. It’s new, and it’s people like us who’ve brought it about. Hell, everybody used to have some personal skill or willingness to work or something he could trade for what he wanted. Now that the machines have taken over, it’s quite somebody who has anything to offer. All most people can do is hope to be given something.

God help us," said Paul. "But, I dunno, this Ghost Shirt thing - it's kind of childish, isn't it? Dressing up like that, and -" "Childish - like Hitler's Brown Shirts, like Mussolini's Black Shirts. Childish like any uniform," said Lasher. "We don't deny it's childish. At the same time, we admit that we've got to be a little childish, anyway, to get the big following we need.

Please, what are public relations?” said Khashdrahr. “That profession,” said Halyard, quoting by memory from the Manual, “that profession specializing in the cultivation, by applied psychology in mass communication media, of favorable public opinion with regard to controversial issues and institutions, without being offensive to anyone of importance, and with the continued stability of the economy and society its primary goal.

I will say you've shown up what thin stuff clergymen were peddling, most of them. When I had a congregation before the war, I used to tell them that the life of their spirit in relation to God was the biggest thing in their lives, and that their part in the economy was nothing by comparison. Now, you people have engineered them out of their part in the economy, in the market place, and they're finding out--most of them--that what's left is just about zero. A good bit short of enough, anyway.

Every child older than six knew the fork, and knew what the good guys did here, and what the bad guys did here. The fork was a familiar one in folk tales the world over, and the good guys and the bad guys, whether in chaps, breechclouts, serapes, leopardskins, or banker’s gray pinstripes, all separated here. Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn’t—no matter when, no matter what. Kroner cleared his throat. “I said, ‘who’s their leader, Paul?’ ” “I am,” said Paul. “And I wish to God I were a better one.

The four had come to an exciting decision" during the six months of the blockade threatened by the authorities, they would make the ruins a laboratory, a demonstration of how well and happily men could live with virtually no machines. They saw now the common man's wisdom in wrecking practically everything. That was the way to do it, and the hell with moderation! "All right, so we'll heat our water and cook our food and light and warm our homes with wood fires," said Lasher. "And walk wherever we're going," said Finnerty. "And read books instead of watching television," said von Neumann. "The Renaissance comes to upstate New York! We'll rediscover the two greatest wonders of the world, the human mind and hand.

That’s pretty strong. I will say you’ve shown up what thin stuff clergymen were peddling, most of them. When I had a congregation before the war, I used to tell them that the life of their spirit in relation to God was the biggest thing in their lives, and that their part in the economy was nothing by comparison. Now, you people have engineered them out of their part in the economy, in the market place, and they’re finding out—most of them—that what’s left is just about zero. A good bit short of enough, anyway. My glass is empty.” Lasher sighed. “What do you expect?” he said. “For generations they’ve been built up to worship competition and the market, productivity and economic usefulness, and the envy of their fellow men—and boom! it’s all yanked out from under them. They can’t participate, can’t be useful any more. Their whole culture’s been shot to hell. My glass is empty.

It was a beautifully simple picture these procession leaders had. It was as though a navigator, in order to free his mind of worries, had erased all the reefs from his maps.

An awakening conscience, unaccompanied by new wisdom, made his life so damned lonely, he decided he wouldn’t much mind being dead.

Nobody’s so damn well educated that you can’t learn ninety per cent of what he knows in six weeks. The other ten per cent is decoration.” “Yes, sir.

The crisis was coming, he knew, when he would have to quit or turn informer, but its approach was unreal, and, lacking a decisive plan for meeting it, he forced a false tranquility on himself--a vague notion that everything would come out all right in the end, the way it always had form him.

it's far easier to ask questions than to answer them.

Your conscience, dammit - doesn't it ever bother you?" "Why should it? I've never done anything dishonest." "Let me put it another way: do you agree things are a mess?" "Between us?" "Everywhere! The world!" She could be appallingly nearsighted. Whenever possible, she liked to reduce any generalization to terms of herself and persons she knew intimately. "Homestead, for instance." "What else could we possibly give the people that they haven't got?" "There! You made my point for me. You said, what else could we give them, as though everything in the world were ours to give or withhold." "Somebody's got to take responsibility, and that's just the way it is when somebody does." "That's just it: things haven't always been that way. It's new, and it's people like us who've brought it about. Hell, everybody used to have some personal skill or willingness to work or something he could trade for what he wanted. Now that the machines have taken over, it's quite somebody who has anything to offer. All most people can do is hope to be given something." "If someone has brains," said Anita firmly, "he can still get to the top. That's the American way, Paul, and it hasn't changed." She looked at him appraisingly. "Brains and nerve, Paul." "And blinders." The punch was gone from his voice, and he felt drugged, a drowsiness from a little too much to drink, from scrambling over a series of emotional peaks and pits, from utter frustration.

I could do with a little more dignity and maturity, because those are the things we're fighting for. But first of all we've got to fight, and fighting is necessarily undignified and immature

What distinguishes man from the rest of the animals is his ability to do artificial things,” said Paul. “To his greater glory, I say. And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.

The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings,” said Paul, “not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems.

Well—I think it’s a grave mistake to put on public record everyone’s I.Q. I think the first thing the revolutionaries would want to do is knock off everybody with an I.Q. over 110, say. If I were on your side of the river, I’d have the I.Q. books closed and the bridges mined.” “Then the 100’s would go after the 110’s, the 90’s after the 100’s, and so on,” said Finnerty. “Maybe. Something like that. Things are certainly set up for a class war based on conveniently established lines of demarkation. And I must say that the basic assumption of the present setup is a grade-A incitement to violence: the smarter you are, the better you are. Used to be that the richer you were, the better you were. Either one is, you’ll admit, pretty tough for the have-not’s to take. The criterion of brains is better than the one of money, but”—he held his thumb and forefinger about a sixteenth of an inch apart—“about that much better.” “It’s about as rigid a hierarchy as you can get,” said Finnerty. “How’s somebody going to up his I.Q.?

He knew with all his heart that the human situation was a frightful botch, but it was such a logical, intelligently arrived-at botch that he couldn’t see how history could possibly have led anywhere else.

There’s something about war that brings out greatness. I

be true to yourself, and you can’t be false to anybody else, and

Better to be nothing than a blind doorman at the head of civilization’s parade. And

Then you’ll do it brilliantly, darling. You’ll get to Pittsburgh yet.

job left vacant two weeks ago by death—the managership of the Pittsburgh Works. “How gay can a party get?

She quieted, and turned away under his stare. Inadvertently, he’d gained the upper hand. He had somehow communicated the thought that had bobbed up in his thoughts unexpectedly: that her strength and poise were no more than a mirror image of his own importance, an image of the power and self-satisfaction the manager of the Ilium Works could have, if he wanted it. In a fleeting second she became a helpless, bluffing little girl in his thoughts, and he was able to feel real tenderness toward her.

Sooner or later someone’s going to catch the imagination of these people with some new magic. At the bottom of it will be a promise of regaining the feeling of participation, the feeling of being needed on earth—hell, dignity. The police are bright enough to look for people like that, and lock them up under the antisabotage laws. But sooner or later someone’s going to keep out of their sight long enough to organize a following.” Paul

No trouble. There really isn’t a heck of a lot to the job.

Is Doctor Proteus on?” said Kroner’s secretary. “Doctor Kroner is in.” “Just a moment,” said Katharine. “Doctor Proteus, Doctor Kroner is in and will speak to you.” “All right, I’m on.” “Doctor Proteus is on the line,” said Katharine. “Doctor Kroner, Doctor Proteus is on the line.” “Tell him to go ahead,” said Kroner. “Tell Doctor Proteus to go ahead,” said Kroner’s secretary. “Doctor Proteus, please go ahead,” said Katharine. “This is Paul Proteus, Doctor Kroner. I’m returning your call.

A huge fireplace and Dutch oven of fieldstone filled one wall. Over them hung a long muzzle-loading rifle, powder horn, and bullet pouch. On the mantel were candle molds, a coffee mill, an iron and trivet, and a rusty kettle. An iron cauldron, big enough to boil a missionary in, swung at the end of a long arm in the fireplace, and below it, like so many black offspring, were a cluster of small pots. A wooden butter churn held the door open, and clusters of Indian corn hung from the molding at aesthetic intervals. A colonial scythe stood in one corner, and two Boston rockers on a hooked rug faced the cold fireplace, where the unwatched pot never boiled. Paul

go shoot a bear. Concentrating hard on the illusion, Paul was able to muster a feeling of positive gratitude for Anita’s presence, to thank God for a woman at his side to help with the petrifying amount of work involved in merely surviving.

The television cameras dollied and panned about him like curious, friendly dinosaurs, sniffing and peering.