Cat's Cradle Quotes

“Call Me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.”

“The novel was about the end of the world in the year 2000, and the name of the book was 2000 A.D. It told about how mad scientists made a terrific bomb that wiped out the whole world.”

“Father needs some kind of book to read to people who are dying or in terrible pain. I don’t suppose you’ve written anything like that.”

″(The San Lorenzans) were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud.”

“Newt remained curled in the chair. He held out his painty hands as though a cat’s cradle were strung between them. ‘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….‘”

″‘I don’t think (Newt’s painting is) very nice,’ Angela complained. ‘I think it’s ugly, but I don’t know anything about modern art. Sometimes I wish Newt would take some lessons, so he could know for sure if he was doing something or not.‘”

“I would have been a Bokononist then, if there had been anyone to teach me the bittersweet lies of Bokonon.”

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

“The stop-and-go signs, garish ghosts in the sleet, went through their irrelevant tomfoolery again and again, telling the glacier of automobiles what to do. Green meant go. Red meant stop. Orange meant change and caution.”

″‘(Dr. Breed) said science was going to discover the basic secret of life someday,’ the bartender put in.”

“Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.”

“No, I don’t think my conscience would let me support a strike like that. When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.”

″‘Nothing generous about it. New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.’ Had I been a Bokononist then, that statement would have made me howl.”

″‘The thing I like,’ said Hazel, ‘is they all speak English and they’re all Christians. That makes things so much easier.‘”

″‘Magic,’ declared Miss Pefko. ‘I’m sorry to hear a member of the Laboratory family using that brackish, medieval world,’ said Dr. Breed.”

″‘I’ll 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.‘”

“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.”

“Actually, I am a very lucky person and I know it. I am about to marry a wonderful little girl. There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look. I am proof of that.”

“And how can you say a man had a good mind when he couldn’t even bother to do anything when the best-hearted, most beautiful woman in the world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding…”

“She broke my heart. I didn’t like that much. But that was the price. In this world, you get what you pay for.”