Philip

“And contrast Mary Kathleen, if you will, with my wife Ruth, the Ophelia of the death camps, who believed that even the most intelligent human beings were so stupid that they could only make things worse by speaking their minds. It was thinkers, after all, who had set up the death camps. Setting up a death camp, with its railroad sidings and its around-the-clock crematoria, was not something a moron could do. Neither could a moron explain why a death camp was ultimately humane.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird

“It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. [...] And it strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that a man can always solve his problems. There is an implication that if you just have a little more energy, a little more fight, the problem can always be solved. That is so untrue that it makes me want to cry--or laugh.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“It's all right,' she said. 'You couldn't help it that you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed- so you were a good man just the same.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird