Joseph Heller Quotes
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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 God was dead, how could I feel this bad?
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Everything passes. (That's what makes it endurable.)
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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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Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.
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When I grow up I want to be a little boy.
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You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate." "Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously.
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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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From men motivated by moral certitude, history teaches, no lasting good ever comes.
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I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service.
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Insanity is contagious.
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She was the epitome of stately sorrow each time she smiled.
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There was only one catch and that was catch 22
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Every writer I know has trouble writing.
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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 think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy
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Just for once I'd like to see all these things sort of straightened out, with each person getting exactly what he deserves. It might give me some confidence in this universe.
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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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It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.
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The laws of nature are only as immutable as the minds which promote them. Ignorance of the law is 9/10ths of the law. Just because you aren't paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
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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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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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Let someone else get killed!
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...Anything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for.