We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.
Interpretation
This quote reflects a pessimistic view on humanity's impact on Earth and suggests that nature is reacting against us.
Kurt Vonnegut's quote critiques human behavior by indicating that our destructive tendencies may warrant a natural response from the planet. He personifies the Earth as an immune system that is attempting to purge humanity for the greater ecological good, provoking thought on our relationship with the environment and the consequences of our actions.
In practice
In a discussion about climate change, one could use this quote to emphasize humanity's destructive impact on the environment.
But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.
I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.
How subservient to Jesus, or to a humane God Almighty, were the leaders of this country back in the 1840's, when Marx said such a supposedly evil thing about religion? They had made it perfectly legal to own human slaves, and weren't going to led women vote or hold public office, God forbid, for another eighty year.
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States - and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - "God damn it, you've got to be kind."
If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
It is this third consequence that has been elaborated in greatest detail and has formed one of the most significant pillars of historical capitalism, institutional racism.
The unformed is not worse than the over-formed. The former is nothing; the latter is mere appearance. Real form presupposes real life.
When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends.
I shall ask for the abolition for the punishment of death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me.
When we speak of the morrow nothing is ever certain.
Who knoweth if to die be but to live, and that called life by mortals be but death?
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