Quotes from Joseph Heller

I am miracle ingredient Z-247. I'm immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman.

For war there is always enough. It's peace that's expensive.

While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it.

You're an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I'm an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I'm in an ideal position to appreciate it.

That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left.

where are the snowdens of yesteryear?

I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.

Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family.

Who is Spain? Why is Hitler? Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?

Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

The enemy, retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.

Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all.

They're not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are they?" "Who else will go?

In a world in which success was the only virtue, he had resigned himself to failure.

I'll tell you what justice is. 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

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

Rise above principal and do what's right.

He was one of those people with lots of intelligence but no brains

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.

He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret

As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.

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.

But how can one be warm alone?