Joseph Heller Quotes
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They can do anything we can't stop them from doing.
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After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. "They asked for volunteers. It's very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back." And he had not written anyone since.
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What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.
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He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.
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I don't think the 'what' distinguishes a good novel from a bad one but rather the 'how.'
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It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.
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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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From men motivated by moral certitude, history teaches, no lasting good ever comes.
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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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Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.
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I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service.
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Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.
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That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
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Insanity is contagious.
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I think that maybe in every company today there is always at least one person who is going crazy slowly.
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I couldn't see much point in tying myself down to a middle-aged woman with four children, even though the woman was my wife and the children were my own.
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There was only one catch and that was catch 22
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When I grow up I want to be a little boy.
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But how can one be warm alone?
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Every writer I know has trouble writing.
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I never even realized I was Jewish until I was practically grown up. Or rather, I used to feel that everybody in the world was Jewish, which amounts to the same thing.
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Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon or burn up.
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...Anything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for.
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Remember that everyone deserves some fun during working hours.