Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

The line frames humanism as an ethical commitment grounded in this-worldly responsibility rather than supernatural accounting. “Behave decently” emphasizes ordinary, practical morality—kindness, fairness, restraint—while the absence of “rewards or punishment after you are dead” rejects fear- or prize-based virtue. In Vonnegut’s broader moral outlook, decency is valuable because it reduces suffering and makes communal life possible, not because it earns cosmic approval. The statement also functions as a critique of moral systems that rely on afterlife incentives, proposing instead that meaning and ethics arise from human solidarity and the consequences of our actions here and now.