Kurt Vonnegut Tribes Quotations

But anyway, it's obvious through human experience that extended families and tribes are terribly important. We can do without an extended family as human beings about as easily as we can do without vitamins or essential minerals.

Also, I think that, you know, it's tribal behavior. I don't think that Pat Robertson, for instance, doubts that we evolved. He is simply representing a tribe.

The trouble with being a secular humanist is that we don't have a congregation. We don't meet so it's a very flimsy tribe, but there's a wonderful quotation from Nietzsche. Nietzsche said, Only a person of deep faith can afford the luxury of skepticism. Something perfectly is going on. I do not doubt it, but the explanations I hear do not satisfy me.

Well, it's an ancestral tribe. These were immigrants from north of Germany who came here about the time of the Civil War, but anyway, these people called themselves free thinkers. They were impressed, incidentally, by Darwin. They're called Humanists now; people who aren't so sure that the Bible is the Word of God.