Player Piano 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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“Those who live by electronics, die by electronics. Sic semper tyrannis.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“I'm doctor of cowshit, pigshit, and chickenshit... when you doctors figure out what you want, you'll find me out in the barn shoveling my thesis.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Player Piano

“That man's got a lot of get up and go," said Anita.
"He fills me full of lie down and die," said Paul.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“Anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave," said Harrison thickly, and he left.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“It isn't knowledge that's making trouble, but the uses it's put to.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“He would make a good lamp post if he'd weather better and didn't have to eat.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“Not slaves,” said Halyard, chuckling patronizingly. “Citizens, employed by government.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings,”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“Everything you think you think because somebody promoted the ideas. Education—nothing but promotion.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“...three thousand dream houses for three thousand families with presumably identical dreams.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano