Cat's Cradle

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.

“I think you’ll find,” said Dr. Breed, “that everybody does about the same amount of thinking. Scientists simply think about things in one way, and other people think about things in others.”

“Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn’t explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan.”

I smiled at one of the guards. He did not smile back. There was nothing funny about national security, nothing at all.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.”

“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”

Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

Sometimes I think that’s the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead.”

“It was an iron chair a man had been roasted alive in,” said Crosby. “He was roasted for murdering his son.” “Only, after they roasted him,” Hazel recalled blandly, “they found out he hadn’t murdered his son after all.”

“It said a lot of things,” she said, “because I was very upset about how Americans couldn’t imagine what it was like to be something else, to be something else and proud of it.”

‘Americans,’” he said, quoting his wife’s letter to the Times, “ ‘are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.’”

“Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on.”

Be like a baby, The Bible say, So I stay like a baby To this very day.

“I’m sure glad it’s a Christian country,” Hazel Crosby whispered to her husband, “or I’d be a little scared.”

You may be getting a nice picture on the wall over there, but, by God, the pissant who’s making it is the most insulting, discouraging son of a bitch I ever met in my life.” The clerk looked sick. “Sir …” “I’m listening,” said Crosby, full of fire. “Sir—he owns the hotel.”

We Bokononists believe that it is impossible to be sole-to-sole with another person without loving the person, provided the feet of both persons are clean and nicely tended. The basis for the foot ceremony is this “Calypso”: We will touch our feet, yes, Yes, for all we’re worth, And we will love each other, yes, Yes, like we love our Mother Earth.

“No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat’s cradle is nothing but a bunch of X’s between somebody’s hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X’s …” “And?” “No damn cat, and no damn cradle.”

“People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.”

“From the way she talked,” I said, “I thought it was a very happy marriage.” Little Newt held his hands six inches apart and he spread his fingers. “See the cat? See the cradle?”

“My God—life! Who can understand even one little minute of it?” “Don’t try,” he said. “Just pretend you understand.”

Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?” Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.

Little Newt snorted. “Religion!” “Beg your pardon?” Castle said. “See the cat?” asked Newt. “See the cradle?”

“Well,” I said to him, “I’d think you would have more reasons for being cheerful than most, doing what you are doing with your life.” “I once had a yacht, too, you know.” “I don’t follow you.” “Having a yacht is a reason for being more cheerful than most, too.”

“Maturity,” Bokonon tells us, “is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.”

The Fourteenth Book is entitled, “What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?” It doesn’t take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: “Nothing.”

We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do, What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must; Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before,” Bokonon tells us. “He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”

way: ‘I am sick and tired …’- “That comes pretty close to describing how I feel most of the time.” “Maybe that’s the way you’re supposed to feel.”