If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words to Live By

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I have heard powerful men on both sides of the Iron Curtain praising the arts. I have been in their museums and concert balls. I have seen the common people attempting to appreciate the art treasures said to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or rubles or what have you. The common people always look waterlogged. They seem to have double pneumonia. They swoon with apathy. This is what is supposed to happen. The purpose of the museums and concert halls and theaters and public statuary and so on is to persuade the common people that they are unworthy of holding power or making big money—because their minds and spirits are inferior. Proof of their inferiority is the fact that they are incapable of appreciating great art.