Joseph Heller Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• From men motivated by moral certitude, history teaches, no lasting good ever comes.

  Joseph Heller

  Men, Moral, Motivated

  10 Copy quote

• Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.

  Joseph Heller

  Funny, Success, Suicide

  1975 Interview in Playboy, Jun.

  15 Copy quote

• It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.

  Joseph Heller

  War, Winning, Differences

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.122, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised that it was good, for he had observed that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people who did not lie.

  Joseph Heller

  Lying, Successful, People

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.

  Joseph Heller

  Good Luck, Simple, Destiny

  Joseph Heller (1997). “God Knows”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

  18 Copy quote

• I've come to look upon death the same way I look upon root-canal work. Everyone else seems to get through it all right, so it couldn't be too difficult for me.

  Joseph Heller

  Roots, Looks, Way

  Joseph Heller, Adam J. Sorkin (1993). “Conversations with Joseph Heller”, p.176, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

• 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?

  Joseph Heller

  Book, Men, Islands

  53 Copy quote

• ...[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for.

  Joseph Heller

  Dying, Worth Living

  21 Copy quote

• 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.

  Joseph Heller

  Hate, Hypocrite, People

  Joseph Heller (2010). “Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.395, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Joseph Heller

  Country, War, Fighting

  Joseph Heller (2010). “Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.323, Simon and Schuster

  22 Copy quote

• They can do anything we can't stop them from doing.

  Joseph Heller

  War, Drug, Can Do

  15 Copy quote

• You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!

  Joseph Heller

  Military, Taken, Tradition

  "Catch-22". Book by Joseph Heller, ch. 27, p. 309, 1961.

  10 Copy quote

• Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.

  Joseph Heller

  Men, Mad, Medal

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Joseph Heller

  Mean, Hands, Grease

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.41, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it.

  Joseph Heller

  Loneliness, Suffering, Problem

  Joseph Heller (1997). “God Knows”, p.61, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• The night was full of horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts.

  Joseph Heller

  Night, Nuts, World

  12 Copy quote

• Remember that everyone deserves some fun during working hours.

  Joseph Heller

  Leadership, Fun, Remember

  5 Copy quote

• I don't understand the process of imagination-though I know that I am very much at its mercy.

  Joseph Heller

  Imagination, Mercy, Process

  Joseph Heller, Adam J. Sorkin (1993). “Conversations with Joseph Heller”, p.107, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  6 Copy quote

• 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?

  Joseph Heller

  Running, Evil, People

  Catch-22 ch. 18 (1961)

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Joseph Heller

  Stupid, Believe, Mean

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.172, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• ¨ Oh, I´m not complaining. I know there´s a war on. I know a lot of people are going to have to suffer for us to win it. But why must I be one of them?¨

  Joseph Heller

  War, Winning, People

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.40, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Joseph Heller

  Giving, Might, Give Me

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.164, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering.

  Joseph Heller

  Funny, God, Jobs

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.172, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• All of our religions but the Judaic and the Greek think more of us dead than alive.

  Joseph Heller

  Thinking, Greek, Alive

  Joseph Heller (2000). “Picture This: A Novel”, p.118, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• It is the anonymous "they," the enigmatic "they" who are in charge. Who is "they"? I don't know. Nobody knows. Not even "they" themselves.

  Joseph Heller

  Nobody Knows, Knows, Enigmatic

  Joseph Heller (2010). “Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.603, Simon and Schuster

  15 Copy quote

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