Life & Wisdom Quote by Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut’s warning lands like a shrug that turns out to be a knife. “Pretend” sounds harmless, even playful - the stuff of costumes, social polish, career ambition. He treats it as moral dynamite. The line insists that identity isn’t an inner treasure you protect from the world; it’s something you manufacture through repetition. Act like a cynic long enough and you don’t just look cynical, you become the person for whom contempt is reflex. Perform decency, and decency hardens into habit. The joke is that the self we imagine as authentic is often just the longest-running role.

The intent is less self-help than sabotage of American self-mythology: the idea that you can fake it till you make it without paying a spiritual bill. Vonnegut watched institutions sell people roles - soldier, corporate man, patriot, consumer - then act surprised when the performance produced real cruelty, real numbness. Coming out of a century of mass propaganda and mass work, his point is that “just following the script” doesn’t absolve you; it reveals you.

Subtextually, the line targets the little compromises that feel temporary. The “only this once” lie, the “I’m just playing along” laugh at the ugly joke, the “it’s just business” transaction that shaves off empathy. Vonnegut’s dry cynicism is a kind of hope: if pretending can corrupt, it can also rehabilitate. Choose the mask carefully. It might stick.