Vonnegut's Philosophy on Contagious Ideas

From Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions” (1973).

It shook up Trout to realize that even he could bring evil into the world—in the form of bad ideas. And, after Dwayne was carted off to a lunatic asylum in a canvas camisole, Trout became a fanatic on the importance of ideas as causes and cures for diseases.

But nobody would listen to him. He was a dirty old man in the wilderness, crying out among the trees and underbrush, “Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease!”

On his monument was written: “We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane”.

What he hoped to have in the way of a tombstone was: “Somebody [Sometime to Sometime]. He tried.”