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.

History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; WHICH men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

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

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.

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.

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

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.

To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. 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.

We do have a zeal for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist.

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.

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.

Now you've given them hope, and they're unhappy. So the blame is all yours.

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.

He was never without misery, and never without hope.

where are the snowdens of yesteryear?

If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?

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

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

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?

I’m not running away from my responsibilities. I’m running to them. There’s nothing negative about running away to save my life.

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.