Joseph Heller Quotes
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The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
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Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?
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You wouldn’t be normal if you were never afraid. Even the bravest men experience fear. One of the biggest jobs we all face in combat is to overcome fear.
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How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?
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So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?
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Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.
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Actually there were many officers' clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of the one on Pianosa. It was a sturdy and complex monument to his powers of determination. Yossarian never went there to help until it was finished; then he went there often, so pleased was he with the large , fine, rambling shingled building. It was a truly splendid building, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his.
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Sure, that's what I mean,' Doc Daneeka said. 'A little grease is what makes this world go round. One hand washes the other. Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.' Yossarian knew what he meant. That's not what I meant,' Doc Daneeka said, as Yossarian began scratching his back.
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But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.
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If Richard Nixon was second-rate, what in the world is third-rate?
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I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals.
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It's a wise person, I guess, who knows he's dumb, and an honest person who knows he's a liar. And it's a dumb person, I guess, whose convinced he's wise...-Bob Slocum
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It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.
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From now on I'm thinking only of me." Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: "But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way." "Then," said Yossarian, "I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?
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They agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.
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Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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I can't start writing until I have a closing line.
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The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it.
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Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did.
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If character is destiny, the good are damned.
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But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
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There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy ... There's a catch. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.
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Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.
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The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.