Quotes from Kurt Vonnegut's "A Man Without a Country"

A Man Without a Country aka A Memoir Of Life In George W Bush's America is a collection of essays from author Kurt Vonnegut. It was published in 2005 as his farewell piece, although more of his unpublished stories came out in 2008 after his death.

This work features various short essays which are more like humorous musings, ranging from topics like socialism an extended families to music therapy and fossil fuel addiction. Vonnegut mentions specific novels which demonstrate "what a bummer it is to be a human being," as well as addressing the mystery of what really was the good news and bad news at the conclusion of Hamlet. All in all, a brief but highly enjoyable piece from one of the world's greatest writers.

Here are some quotes I enjoyed:

"Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet- the only one in the whole Milky Way- with a century of transportation whoopee…As long as we are stuck with being homo sapiens, why mess around? Let's wreck the whole joint. Anybody got an atomic bomb?"

"…In defense of humankind…everybody just got here. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the crazy making games going on today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls' basketball."

"I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex."

"If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

"Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

"By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."

"What good is an education? The boisterous guessers are still in charge- the haters of information."

"In case you haven't noticed, we (Americans) are now as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis once were."

"Napalm came from Harvard…Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler…What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own?"