Cat's Cradle Quotes
"Live by the foma* that makes you brave and kind and healthy and happy." -- The Books of Bokonon. 1:5 *Harmless untruths.
"If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons, that person may be a member of your karass."
"Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass." By that he means that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries.
"All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies."
"Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either."
"I stand before you now because I never stopped dawdling like an eight-year-old on a spring morning on his way to school."
"Why should I bother with made-up games when there are so many real ones going on?"
"The hopes and fears of all the years are here with us tonight."
"In this room, Dr. Felix Hoenikker, Nobel Laureate in Physics, spent the last twenty-eight years of his life."
"Mother, Mother, how I pray for you to guard us every day."
"You are not dead, but only sleeping. We should smile, and stop our weeping."
"I am about to marry a wonderful little girl. There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look."
"Around and around and around we spin, with feet of lead and wings of tin."
"New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become."
"Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
"Very soon now. This gentleman here been paying his respects to Dr. Hoenikker?"
"Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is."
"I have a kitchen. But it is not a complete kitchen. I will not be truly gay until I have a Dispose-all."
"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."
"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."
"The highest possible form of treason is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do."
"Papa" Monzano, he's so very bad, But without bad "Papa" I would be so sad; Because without "Papa's" badness, Tell me, if you would, How could wicked old Bokonon Ever, ever look good?"
"So I said good-bye to government, And I gave my reason: That a really good religion Is a form of treason."
"All you have to do is touch the ground and then your lips and you're done for."
"That's the way little babies are made, in case you didn't know."
"It's all so simple, that's all. It solves so much for so many, so simply."
"He always said he would never take his own advice, because he knew it was worthless."
"Would you wish any of these alive again, if you could?"
"We've got all kinds of good things to eat. Whenever we want water, we just build a campfire and melt some."
"The Swiss Family Robinson--that's what we call ourselves."
"I am unable to call them men for this simple reason: that in the same war in which lo Hoon-yera Mora-toorz tut Zamoo-cratz-ya died, my own son died."
"You're with your mom, now. Don't you worry about a thing."
"In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness."