Kurt Vonnegut — Quote from Cat's Cradle
“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.”
Cat's Cradle (1963)
Concepts: meaning, absurd, authenticity
Resonant Quotes
- “Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life...” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Letters Dostoevsky's call to spend a lifetime unraveling human mystery finds perfect resonance in Vonnegut's portrait of huma...
- “The human dilemma is that which arises out of a man's capacity to experience ...” — Rollo May, The Courage to Create Vonnegut's verse perfectly illustrates May's dilemma — while animals simply act, humans are cursed with the reflexive...
- “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Ju...” — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus Both identify humanity's unique burden of existential questioning—Camus frames it as philosophy's central crisis whil...
- “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One m...” — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus Both confront the human condition's uniqueness—Camus celebrates our capacity to find meaning in meaningless struggle,...
- “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort o...” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science Both quotes confront the human predicament of consciousness in a meaningless universe—Nietzsche's theological crisis ...
- “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness ...” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea Both address the human burden of consciousness in an indifferent universe—Vonnegut's verse highlighting our unique co...
- “A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other ...” — Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades Mann's writer struggling with language mirrors Vonnegut's human condemned to seek understanding—both capture the dist...
- “Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to ...” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky's warning about self-deception finds its complement in Vonnegut's observation that humans are compelled to...