If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young. In its pages he dispenses advice to college graduates, spanning from 1978 - 2004. Vonnegut was a Humanist from long line of Humanists, and while he mentions his own philosophy of living, more frequently, in nearly every speech, he talks about God:
"I am so smart I know what is wrong with the world. Everybody asks during and after our wars, and the continuing terrorist attacks all over the globe, 'What's gone wrong?' What has gone wrong is that too many people, including high school kids and heads of state, are obeying the Code of Hammurabi, a King of Babylonia who lived nearly four thousand years ago. And you can find his code echoed in the Old Testament, too. Are you ready for this?
'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'
A categorical imperative for all who live in obedience to the Code of Hammurabi, which includes heroes of every cowboy show and gangster show you ever saw, is this: Every injury, real or imagined, shall be avenged. Somebody's going to be really sorry.
Bombs away---or whatever.
When Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross, he said, 'Forgive them Father, they know not what they do.' What kind of man was that? Any real man, obeying the Code of Hammurabi, would have said, 'Kill them, Dad, and all their friends and relatives, and make their deaths slow and painful.'
His greatest legacy to us, in my humble opinion, consists of only twelve words. They are the antidote to the poison of the Code of Hammurabi, a formula almost as compact as Albert Einstein's 'E = mc 2.'
Jesus of Nazareth told us to say these twelve words when we prayed: 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.'
Bye-bye, Code of Hammurabi.
And for those words alone, he deserves to be called 'the Prince of Peace.'
...
Revenge provokes revenge which provokes revenge which provokes revenge---forming an unbroken chain of death and destruction linking nations of today to barbarous tribes of thousands and thousands of years ago.
We may never dissuade leaders of our nation or any other nation from responding vengefully, violently, to every insult or injury.
But in our personal lives, our inner lives, at least we can learn to live without the sick excitement, without the kick of having scores to settle with this particular person, or that bunch of people, or that particular institution or race or nation.
And we can then reasonably ask forgiveness for our trespasses, since we forgive those who trespass against us. And we can teach our children and then our grandchildren to do the same---so that they, too, can never be a threat to anyone.
OK?
Amen."
Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia, 1999
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