Joseph Heller Quotes

141 Sourced Quotes

Only Hungry Joe had something better to do each time he finished his missions. He had screaming nightmares and won fist fights with Huple's cat.

Joseph Heller
Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning. Garroting. That's what justice is.

Joseph Heller
I wanted to be a writer when I was in the sixth grade. Of course I wanted to be one without working at it.

Joseph Heller
I don't understand the process of imagination — though I know that I am very much at its mercy. I feel that these ideas are floating around in the air and they pick me to settle upon.

Joseph Heller
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.

Joseph Heller
-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
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
Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts — and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?

Joseph Heller
I want to keep my dreams, even bad ones, because without them, I might have nothing all night long.

Joseph Heller
Hungry Joe collected lists of fatal diseases and arranged them in alphabetical order so that he could put his finger without delay on any one he wanted to worry about.

Joseph Heller
The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.

Joseph Heller
When one is infatuated, faults are endearing that in others would be heinous.

Joseph Heller
I do know that girls in their early twenties are easy and sweet. (Girls in their late twenties are easier but sad, and that isn't so sweet.) They are easy, I think, because they are sweet, and they are sweet, I think, because they are dumb.

Joseph Heller
That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

Joseph Heller
Now THERE'S a hollow state to be in, isn't it — to believe in God and get no sign that He's there.

Joseph Heller
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind…Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

Joseph Heller
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
Gold was opposed to segregation and equally opposed to integration. Certainly he did not believe that women or homosexuals should suffer persecution or discrimination. On the other hand, he was privately opposed to all equal rights amendments, for he certainly did not want members of either group associating with him on levels of equality or familiarity.

Joseph Heller
They couldn't keep Death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady.

Joseph Heller
But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don't make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.

Joseph Heller
Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.

Joseph Heller
All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.

Joseph Heller
"Let someone else get killed!"
"Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?"
"Well then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?"

Joseph Heller
The only wisdom I think I've attained is the wisdom to be skeptical of other people's ideology and other people's arguments. I tend to be a skeptic, I don't like dogmatic approaches by anybody. I don't like intolerance and a dogmatic person is intolerant of other people. It's one of the reasons I keep a distance from all religious beliefs. I think in this country and in Australia too there's a late intolerance in most religions, an intolerance, a part that could easily become persecutions.
We have some ultra-orthodox Jewish sects here in New York and I fear them as much as I would fear a Nazi organisation.

Joseph Heller
Hasn't it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?" "Yes, sir, it has." "Then why do you do it?" "To assuage my fears of sexual impotence.

Joseph Heller
I don't think it's good to achieve too much at too early an age. What else can the future give you if you've already got all that your imagination has dreamt up for you?

Joseph Heller
The Pacific Ocean was a body of water surrounded on all sides by elephantiasis and other dread diseases.

Joseph Heller
Didn't I once observe that there is nothing new under the sun?

Joseph Heller
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
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?

Joseph Heller