Explore Quotes by Joseph Heller

I think Haig will be foolish, but perhaps not quite as foolish as Kissinger was, because Haig doesn't have the education Kissinger had. Haig is a little more dangerous because, I fear, he believes what he says, whereas I never got that impression from Kissinger.

I do not have, and never had, any interest in either the Bible or religion.

The idea of using actual clippings came about as a way of characterizing Gold. Gold uses clippings because he hates doing research and is not even really interested in the books and articles he writes.

I don't believe in miracles because it's been a long time since we've had any.

I've adjusted to this, that my books are not going to get unanimously good reviews.

Rise above principle and do what's right.

I've only had four ideas for a novel in my life, and I've written all of them.

All of my books deal in a very rough, rude fashion with subjects about which there are great conflicts of opinion.

The villains will come along. There were plenty in the Carter administration, and there will be plenty with Reagan.

Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.

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

Never quit a job as a matter of principle. You'll always regret it.

¨ 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?¨

Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window, and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.

Actually there were many officers' clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of the one on Pianosa. It was a sturdy and complex monument to his powers of determination. Yossarian never went there to help until it was finished; then he went there often, so pleased was he with the large , fine, rambling shingled building. It was a truly splendid building, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his.

where are the snowdens of yesteryear?

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.

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

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.

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

Rise above principal and do what's right.