Author Kurt Vonnegut once said: “We will go down in history as the first society that was not saved because it was not cost-effective.”
For years, Internet users have shared a quote about a society that refuses to spare itself because of its estimated cost. The saying is by Kurt Vonnegut, author of satirical novels such as “Cat’s Cradle” and “Slaughterhouse Five.”
As quoted in posts on social media platforms including X (archived), Facebook (archived) and Reddit (archived), the entire plague reads: “We will go down in history as the first society to not save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.”
(Facebook page English literature)
Some internet users wondered if Vonnegut ever actually said those words. For example, one Reddit user responded to a December 2024 post that had received about 34,000 upvotes at the time of writing, writing (archived): “Does anyone know where this quote comes from? It seems to come from multiple people in different countries. sources, but is never directly referenced.”
In short, there was no verifiable evidence that Vonnegut ever said this exact quote, which first appeared securely in data online (archived) in 2011, four years after Vonnegut’s death. However, Vonnegut used similar language to express the same general idea at least twice.
Christopher Lafave, curator of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Indianapolis, Indiana, said by email that he had tried to source the quote “a few times” and had never found any concrete evidence that the words came from Vonnegut. .
However, Vonnegut expressed similar sentiments in other quotes that are securely attested—that is, for which there is provable primary evidence.
The example Lafave referred to, from Vonnegut’s 2005 novel “The Man Without a Country,” was: “Good country — we could have saved it, but we were too cheap and lazy.”
Vonnegut made an even more similar statement to a New York Times reporter in 1989, as noted by user X (archived) in 2023. In that article, Vonnegut listed things including “the amount of deforestation in Europe” and “children.” without training here” before saying “No one is going to do anything about it. The planet will not be saved. It would not be cost-effective to do so.”
Some (archived) social media users have claimed (archived) that the quote under investigation here was part of a speech Vonnegut gave at the University of Oregon in 1990. However, no direct evidence of such speech appeared in the collection’s online search aid. Vonnegut’s papers at Indiana University Bloomington’s Lilly Library.
We also found no mention of any 1990 Vonnegut speech or lecture in the archives of the Daily Emerald, the University of Oregon’s student newspaper.
Other (archived) internet users have claimed (archived) that the quote “We will go down in history as the first society not to be saved because it was not cost-effective” was actually by author and environmental journalist Donella Meadows, who died in 2001. As evidence these users sometimes cited for including the quote on Meadows’ Goodreads profile. (Note that Goodreads allows users to submit quotes to the website’s database without proof of the authenticity of the quotes.)
We could not find a citation in any of Meadows’ published works. We’ve reached out to the Donella Meadows Project, the organization that maintains a website about Meadows’ life and work, to ask if they’re aware of any evidence linking the quote to Meadows, and we’ll update this story if and when they respond.
In the end, we found no concrete evidence that the quote “We will go down in history as the first society not saved because it wasn’t cost-effective” came from Vonnegut – at least not in the form it circulated on social media.
However, Vonnegut expressed similar sentiments several times using the same language. It is possible that the connection of the quote to Vonnegut was due to internet users misremembering or paraphrasing statements he had actually made.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that primary evidence will eventually emerge showing that Vonnegut actually used this exact expression at some point. For this reason, we have rated this claim as unproven, which means that we have examined the available evidence and have not come to a right or wrong conclusion.