If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

The line is a sardonic twist on the proverb “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” It suggests that in many real-world settings—especially bureaucratic or mediocre ones—competence is relative: even minimal skill can look exceptional when standards are low. The crude phrasing underscores Vonnegut’s characteristic impatience with hollow professionalism and his dark humor about how societies reward the appearance of ability. Read this way, the quote is less a celebration of doing things poorly than a bleak observation about how easily people can gain status by being only slightly less inept than those around them.