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Who really said it

Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum

Spoken by Kurt Vonnegut 1922–2007 · American novelist & essayist
Verified In copyright

Vonnegut’s, and the wording matters. He said it at the Connecticut Forum in Hartford in February 2006, as a message to future generations; The Hartford Courant printed it on 5 February 2006. He liked the line enough to letter it into a print — signed off “Love, 2006 A.D.” — shown at the Indianapolis Art Center in 2007. The word is roaring — the “rolling drunk on petroleum” you see everywhere surfaced after he died.

Last verified 30 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum” Kurt Vonnegut, at the Connecticut Forum, Hartford, February 2006, as reported in The Hartford Courant, 5 February 2006, p. B1 — full form: "Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum. Love, 2006 A.D."

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Estate of Kurt Vonnegut). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Kurt Vonnegut — American novelist, essayist & Dresden POW. Theme: "Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Occasion
The Connecticut Forum, Hartford, February 2006 — a panel discussion with fellow writers; the report is headlined “Vonnegut, Weiner, Oates Discuss Fiction”
First report
The Hartford Courant, 5 February 2006, p. B1, “Writers Share Wit, Wisdom,” by Robert A. Frahm
Full form
“Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum. Love, 2006 A.D.”
Also
Lettered into a Vonnegut print in the show Confetti, Indianapolis Art Center, 2007

Asked about a reference in his most recent book to the world’s dependence on oil, he offered this message to future generations: “Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum. … My reading of history [is] the only fun most human beings have ever had … has been driving automobiles. … Eventually we will run out of fossil fuels. I think the world is ending.” as reported in The Hartford Courant

The ellipses are in the newspaper’s text, not ours — the reporter was compressing a longer answer. A second journalist at the same event heard him add four more words: “… roaring drunk on petroleum, and we still are.”

Quote Investigator on “roaring drunk on petroleum”

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ did the trace and names the earliest citation: The Hartford Courant, 5 February 2006, p. B1, “Writers Share Wit, Wisdom — Vonnegut, Weiner, Oates Discuss Fiction,” by Robert A. Frahm.
  • A second reporter was in the room. Quote Investigator ↗ also quotes the New Haven Register of 12 February 2006, which prints the line with the tail “and we still are.”
  • Vonnegut had been using the phrase for months. Quote Investigator ↗ cites a USA Today interview of 6 October 2005: “When I got here in 1922, this country was already roaring drunk on petroleum … We are still roaring drunk on petroleum.”
  • Quote Investigator ↗ finds the “rolling” variant only from November 2008 — after Vonnegut’s death in April 2007 — and no direct evidence he ever used it.
In copyright

Vonnegut spoke these words in 2006 and died in 2007, so they are firmly in copyright in the United States — nowhere near the 1931 public-domain threshold. The newspaper reports that carry the line are separately in copyright to their publishers.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The version you have seen is probably wrong

The attribution is correct — Vonnegut really said this. One word of it is usually not.

“rolling drunk on petroleum” wording drift

A “rolling drunk” variant circulates widely. Quote Investigator ↗ finds it no earlier than a November 2008 post — nineteen months after Vonnegut died — and no evidence he ever said it. Every contemporaneous citation QI found has roaring, which is also the word he used in a 2005 USA Today interview.

the missing salutation

The line is nearly always quoted as a bare apology. As Vonnegut wrote it out for his 2006 print it is a letter: “Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum. Love, 2006 A.D.” The joke is the sign-off.

a spoken remark, not a book line spoken, not printed

This is not a line from any of Vonnegut’s books, though it is easy to assume it is: he said it out loud in Hartford, answering a question about A Man Without a Country, and the earliest text of it is a newspaper report of that evening ↗.

Verdict: really Vonnegut, February 2006 — and the word is roaring, per Quote Investigator’s trace ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

Vonnegut was eighty-three and had a year to live. He had just published A Man Without a Country, a book that returns again and again to fossil fuels, and in Hartford he was asked about it in front of an audience that seems to have expected something warmer.

What he gave them instead was an apology addressed to people not yet born, phrased as a note left by someone leaving a party they had wrecked. It works because the guilt is collective and cheerful at once — “we” did this, and we had a wonderful time.

“Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum. Love, 2006 A.D.”

Read the full story

He had been circling the phrase for at least a year. In October 2005 he told USA Today: “When I got here in 1922, this country was already roaring drunk on petroleum … We are still roaring drunk on petroleum.” The Hartford answer is that observation turned into a farewell note.

In 2007 the line appeared as a hand-lettered Vonnegut print in Confetti at the Indianapolis Art Center, salutation and sign-off intact; NUVO described the show on 4 April, a week before he died. He kept faxing handwritten sayings to the editor of In These Times until about a month before his death, and this was one of them.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Mortality Time

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Please Accept Our Apologies…quoteinvestigator.com

The full citation chain from the 2005 USA Today interview through the 2006 Hartford Courant report to the 2008 “rolling” variant.
Kurt Vonneguten.wikiquote.org

Sourced collection of Vonnegut quotations — useful for comparison, though it does not carry this line.
A Man Without a Countryen.wikipedia.org

The 2005 book whose remarks on oil dependence prompted the question Vonnegut was answering in Hartford.
Kurt Vonneguten.wikipedia.org

Biography and dates, including his death on 11 April 2007 — before the “rolling” variant appeared.

The author

About Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut

1922–2007 · American novelist, essayist & Dresden POW

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) was an American novelist and essayist who survived the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war and spent the rest of his career writing about it, obliquely and then directly. Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions fused science fiction, black comedy and moral seriousness into a voice nobody has successfully imitated. In his last decades he wrote more essays than novels, and became one of the most quoted — and most misquoted — American writers on the internet.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The earliest documented source (Chicago)

Robert A. Frahm, “Writers Share Wit, Wisdom — Vonnegut, Weiner, Oates Discuss Fiction,” The Hartford Courant, 5 February 2006, B1, quoting Kurt Vonnegut at the Connecticut Forum, Hartford. Cited in Quote Investigator, “Please Accept Our Apologies. We Were Roaring Drunk On Petroleum,” 30 October 2023.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/please-accept-our-apologies-we-were-roaring-drunk-on/

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