All Quotes

"The room seemed to tip, and its walls and ceiling and floor were transformed momentarily into the mouths of many tunnels – tunnels leading in all directions through time. I had a Bokononist vision of the unity in every second of all time and all wandering mankind, all wondering womankind, all wondering children."

"My second wife had left me on the grounds that I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with."

"“It is not possible to make a mistake,” she assured me. I did not know that this was a customary greeting given by all Bokononists when meeting a shy person. So, I responded with a feverish discussion of whether it was possible to make a mistake or not."

"Science is magic that works."

"[Hazel Crosby's] obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon. Other examples are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows - and any nation, anytime, anywhere. As Bokonon invites us to sing along with him: If you wish to study a granfalloon Just remove the skin of a toy balloon."

"The people down there are poor enough and scared enough and ignorant enough to have some common sense!"

"... 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... 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."

"The highest possible form of treason," said [Horlick] Minton, "is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do. Claire tried to make the point that American foreign policy should recognize hate rather than imagine love." "I guess Americans are hated a lot of places." "People are hated a lot of places. Claire pointed out ... that Americans, in being hated, were simply paying the normal penalty for being people, and that they were foolish to think they should somehow be exempted from that penalty. But the loyalty board didn't pay any attention to that. All they knew was that Claire and I both felt that Americans were unloved."

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

"It was the belief of Bokonon that good societies could be built only by pitting good against evil, and by keeping tension between the two high at all times."

"Never index your own book."

"Never had I seen a human being better adjusted to such a humiliating physical handicap. I shuddered with admiration."

"A pissant is somebody who thinks he’s so damn smart, he never can keep his mouth shut. No matter what anybody says, he’s got to argue with it. You say you like something, and, by God, he’ll tell you why you’re wrong to like it. A pissant does his best to make you feel like a boob all the time. No matter what you say, he knows better."

"He reported his avocation as: “Being alive.” He reported his principal occupation as: “Being dead.”"

"The San Lorenzan National Anthem. Its melody was "Home on the Range." The words had been written in 1922 by Lionel Boyd Johnson, by Bokonon. The words were these: "Oh, ours is a land / Where the living is grand, / And the men are fearless as sharks; / The women are pure, / And we always are sure / That our children will all toe their marks. / San, San Lo-ren-zo! / What a rich, lucky island are we! / Our enemies quail, / For they know they will fail / Against people so reverent and free.""

"Every greedy, unreasonable dream I’d ever had about what a woman should be came true in Mona. There, God love her warm and creamy soul, was peace and plenty forever."

"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."

"Man is vile, and man makes nothing worth making, knows nothing worth knowing."

"“Well, when it became evident that no governmental or economic reform was going to make the people much less miserable, the religion became the one real instrument of hope. Truth was the enemy of the people, because the truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the people with better and better lies."

"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."

"My God — life! Who can understand even one little minute of it?" "Don't try," [Castle] said. "Just pretend you understand."

"Her glissandi spoke of heaven and hell and all that lay in between. Such music from such a woman could only be the case of schizophrenia or demonic possession."

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

"If he keeps going at his present rate, working night and day, the number of people he’s saved will equal the number of people he let die – in the year 3010."

"He had made me feel as though my own free will were as irrelevant as the free will of a piggy-wig arriving at the Chicago stockyards."

"I learned of the Bokononists cosmogony .. wherein Borasisi, the sun, held Pabu, the moon, in his arms, and hoped Pabu would bear him a fiery child. But poor Pabu gave birth to children that were cold, that did not burn; and Borasisi threw them away in disgust. Those were the planets who circled their terrible father at a safe distance. Then poor Pabu herself was cast away, and she went to live with her favourite child, which was Earth. Earth was Pabu’s favorite because it had people on it; and the people looked up to her and loved her and sympathised. And what opinion did Bokonon hold of his own cosmogony? "Foma! Lies!" he wrote. "A pack of foma!""

"I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done." "Nice going, God!" "Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have." "I feel very unimportant compared to You." "The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around."

"When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed."

""Now I will destroy the whole world." ... It’s what Bokonists always say when they are about to commit suicide."

"God never wrote a good play in His life."

"I remembered The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which I had read in its entirety the night before. 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.""

"The brainless serenity of charwomen and janitors working late at night came over us. In a messy world we were at least making our little corner clean."

"Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be."

"“History,” writes Bokonon. “Read it and weep!”"

"I am about to do a very un-ambassadorial thing ... I am about to tell you what I really feel. ... We are gathered here, friends ... to honor [the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy], children dead, all dead, all murdered in war. It is customary on days like this to call such lost children men. I am unable to call them men for this simple reason: that in the same war in which [the Martyrs] died, my own son died. My soul insists that I mourn not a man but a child. I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays. But they are murdered children all same. And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind. Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns. ... [I]f today is really in honor of a hundred children murdered in war ... is today a day for a thrilling show? The answer is yes, on one condition: that we, the celebrants, are working consciously and tirelessly to reduce the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind."

"This wreath I bring is a gift from the people of one country to the people of another. Never mind which countries, think of people…"

"There was a sound like that of the gentle closing of a portal as big as the sky, the great door of heaven being closed softly. It was a grand AH-WHOOM. I opened my eyes - and all the sea was ice-nine. The moist green earth was a blue-white pearl. The sky darkened. ... [T]he sun became a sickly yellow ball, tiny and cruel. The sky was filled with worms. The worms were tornadoes."

"And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely. “Everything must have a purpose?” asked God. “Certainly,” said man. “Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And He went away."

"I had heard it suggested one time that the seasons in the temperate zone should be six rather than four in number: summer, autumn, locking, winter, unlocking, and spring. And I remembered that as I straightened up beside our manhole, and stared and listened and sniffed. There were no smells. There was no movement. Every step I took made a gravelly squeak in blue-white frost. And every squeak was echoed loudly. The season of locking was over. The earth was locked up tight. It was winter, now and forever."

"We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodely 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."

"“He always said he would never take his own advice, because he knew it was worthless.”"

"It's all so simple, that's all. It solves so much for so many, so simply."

"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are 'It might have been.'"

"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."

"“As far as I know, Bokononism is the only religion that has any commentary on midgets.”"

"The hand that stocks the drug stores rules the world."

"If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who."

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."