Satire Books

"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt. (p. 122)"

"Billy was having an adventure very common among people without power in time of war: He was trying to prove to a willfully deaf and blind enemy that he was interesting to hear and see. He kept silent until the lights went out at night, and then, when there had been a long silence containing nothing to echo, he said to Rumfoord, "I was in Dresden when it was bombed. I was a prisoner of war." (p. 193"

"[Eliot] Rosewater said an interesting thing to Billy [Pilgrim] one time … He said that everything there was to know about life is in "The Brothers Karamazov," by Fyodor Dostoevsky. "But that isn't enough anymore," said Rosewater. (p. 101)"

"American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed. (pp. 74-75)"

"Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?" "That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?" "Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it. "Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why." (pp. 76-77)"

"If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob! (p. 67)"

"All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. (p. 86)"

"As part of the gun crew, he had helped to fire one shot in anger — from a 57-millimeter antitank gun. The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the zipper on the fly of God Almighty. The gun lapped up snow and vegetation with a blowtorch thirty feet long. The flame left a black arrow on the ground, showing the Germans exactly where the gun was hidden. The shot was a miss. (p. 34)"

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. (p. 39)"

""If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by 'free will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will." (p. 86)"

"Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy's wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference." Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future. (p. 60)"

"And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes. (pp. 21-22)"

"People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore. I've finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this: "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." It ends like this: "Poo-tee-weet?" (p. 22)"

"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time."

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.""

"There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time."

"Billy turned on his television set, clicking its channel selector around and around. He was looking for programs on which he might be allowed to appear. But it was too early in the evening for programs that allowed people with peculiar opinions to speak out. It was only a little after eight o’clock, so all the shows were about silliness or murder. So it goes. (pp. 199-200)"

"Il y avait dans le voisinage un derviche très fameux, qui passait pour le meilleur philosophe de la Turquie; ils allèrent le consulter; Pangloss porta la parole, et lui dit: Maître, nous venons vous prier de nous dire pourquoi un aussi étrange animal que l’homme a été formé. — De quoi te mêles-tu? dit le derviche, est-ce là ton affaire? — Mais, mon Révérend Père, dit Candide, il y a horriblement de mal sur la terre. — Qu’importe, dit le derviche, qu’il y ait du mal ou du bien? Quand sa Hautesse envoie un vaisseau en Égypte, s’embarrasse-t-elle si les souris qui sont dans le vaisseau sont à leur aise ou non? — Que faut-il donc faire? dit Pangloss. — Te taire, dit le derviche."

"Vous devez avoir, dit Candide au Turc, une vaste et magnifique terre? — Je n’ai que vingt arpents, répondit le Turc; je les cultive avec mes enfants; le travail éloigne de nous trois grands maux: l’ennui, le vice, et le besoin."

"Quand les deux curieux eurent pris congé de Son Excellence: Or çà, dit Candide à Martin, vous conviendrez que voilà le plus heureux de tous les hommes, car il est au-dessus de tout ce qu’il possède. — Ne voyez-vous pas, dit Martin, qu’il est dégoûté de tout ce qu’il possède? Platon a dit, il y a longtemps, que les meilleurs estomacs ne sont pas ceux qui rebutent tous les aliments. — Mais, dit Candide, n’y a-t-il pas du plaisir à tout critiquer, à sentir des défauts où les autres hommes croient voir des beautés? — C’est-à-dire, reprit Martin, qu’il y a du plaisir à n’avoir pas de plaisir?"

"Travaillons sans raisonner, dit Martin; c’est le seul moyen de rendre la vie supportable."

"Les sots admirent tout dans un auteur estimé. Je ne lis que pour moi; je n'aime que ce qui est à mon usage."

"Cela est bien dit, rèpondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin."

"Il est beau d’écrire ce qu’on pense; c’est le privilège de l’homme."

"Je voulus cent fois me tuer, mais j’aimais encore la vie. Cette faiblesse ridicule est peut-être un de nos penchants les plus funestes; car y a t-il rien de plus sot que de vouloir porter continuellement un fardeau qu’on veut toujours jeter par terre? d’avoir son être en horreur, et de tenir à son être? enfin de caresser le serpent qui nous dévore, jusqu’à ce qu’il nous ait mangé le coeur?"

"Je suis le meilleur homme du monde, et voilà déjà trois hommes que je tue; et dans ces trois il y a deux prêtres!"

"Les captifs mes compagnons, ceux qui les avaient pris, soldats, matelots, noirs, basanés, blancs, mulâtres, et enfin mon capitaine, tout fut tué; et je demeurai mourante sur un tas de morts. Des scènes pareilles se passaient, comme on sait, dans l’étendue de plus de trois cents lieues, sans qu’on manquât aux cinq prières par jour ordonnées par Mahomet."

"Si nous ne trouvons pas des choses agréables, nous trouverons du moins des choses nouvelles."

"Les malheurs particuliers font le bien général, de sorte que plus il y a de malheurs particuliers, et plus tout est bien."

"Après le tremblement de terre qui avait détruit les trois quarts de Lisbonne, les sages du pays n’avaient pas trouvé un moyen plus efficace pour prévenir une ruine totale que de donner au peuple un bel auto-da-fé; il était décidé par l’université de Coïmbre que le spectacle de quelques personnes brûlées à petit feu, en grande cérémonie, est un secret infaillible pour empêcher la terre de trembler... Le même jour la terre trembla de nouveau avec un fracas épouvantable."

"Qu’est-ce qu’optimisme? disait Cacambo. — Hélas! dit Candide, c’est la rage de soutenir que tout est bien quand on est mal."

"Si c’est ici le meilleur des mondes possibles, que sont donc les autres?"

"Pangloss enseignait la métaphysico-théologo-cosmolo-nigologie. Il prouvait admirablement qu’il n’y a point d’effet sans cause, et que, dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles, le château de monseigneur le baron était le plus beau des châteaux et madame la meilleure des baronnes possibles.'Il est démontré, disait-il, que les choses ne peuvent être autrement: car, tout étant fait pour une fin, tout est nécessairement pour la meilleure fin. Remarquez bien que les nez ont été faits pour porter des lunettes, aussi avons-nous des lunettes. Les jambes sont visiblement instituées pour être chaussées, et nous avons des chausses. Les pierres ont été formées pour être taillées, et pour en faire des châteaux, aussi monseigneur a un très beau château; le plus grand baron de la province doit être le mieux logé; et, les cochons étant faits pour être mangés, nous mangeons du porc toute l’année: par conséquent, ceux qui ont avancé que tout est bien ont dit une sottise; il fallait dire que tout est au mieux."

"Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres."

"Pay no attention when I laugh .. I'm a notorious pervert in that respect."

"“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."

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

"Science is magic that works."

"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 agree with one Bokononist idea. I agree that all religions, including Bokononism, are nothing but lies."

"Nothing in this book is true. "Live by the foma* that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy." — The Books of Bokonon 1:5 *Harmless untruths"

"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!""

"We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon ... "If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons," writes Bokonon, "that person may be a member of your karass." At another point in The Books of Bokonon he tells us, "Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass." By that he means that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries. It is as free form as an amoeba."

"All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies."

"I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel better, even if it's unscientific."

"“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."

"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."

"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."