Joseph Heller Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Joseph Heller

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Truth

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.336, Simon and Schuster

  93 Copy quote

• When I grow up I want to be a little boy.

  Joseph Heller

  Inspirational, Children, Growing Up

  Joseph Heller (1974). “Something Happened”, p.340, Simon and Schuster

  48 Copy quote

• Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.

  Joseph Heller

  Mean, Civilization, Earth

  Joseph Heller, Adam J. Sorkin (1993). “Conversations with Joseph Heller”, p.287, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  21 Copy quote

• The question is: what is a sane man to do in an insane society?

  Joseph Heller

  Depression, Men, Insane

  4 Copy quote

• The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

  Joseph Heller

  Country, Exercise, Rights

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.373, Simon and Schuster

  32 Copy quote

• In the long run, failure was the only thing that worked predictably. All else was accidental.

  Joseph Heller

  Running, Failure, Long

  Joseph Heller (1997). “Good as Gold”, p.71, Simon and Schuster

  15 Copy quote

• You know, that might be the answer - to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail.

  Joseph Heller

  Answers, Might, Failing

  "Catch-22". Book by Joseph Heller, 1961.

  17 Copy quote

• Every writer I know has trouble writing.

  Joseph Heller

  Writing, Young Writers, Trouble

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  29 Copy quote

• History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind. Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor, and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place their countries at the mercy of Arab oil.

  Joseph Heller

  Country, Light, Electric Motors

  Joseph Heller (1997). “Good as Gold”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

  24 Copy quote

• [They] agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.

  Joseph Heller

  People, Educate

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.43, Simon and Schuster

  23 Copy quote

• There was only one catch and that was Catch-22. 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

  Crazy, Would Be, Want

  Catch-22 ch. 5 (1961).

  11 Copy quote

• The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.

  Joseph Heller

  Death, Suicide, Wisdom

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

  16 Copy quote

• There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.

  Joseph Heller

  People, Might, Wanted

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.43, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

  Joseph Heller

  Failure, Men, Self

  1961 Of Colonel Cargill. Catch-22, ch.3.

  18 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Crazy, Book, Men

  "Heller's legacy will be 'Catch-22' ideas". archives.cnn.com. December 13, 1999.

  9 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

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  Joseph Heller

  Ignorance, Mean, Law

  1 Copy quote

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

  Joseph Heller

  Dying, Worth Living

  16 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

  10 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

  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

  48 Copy quote

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

  Joseph Heller

  War, Drug, Can Do

  11 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

  7 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.

  9 Copy quote

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