Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been demoted because he no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not. He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.
His goading remained gentle. “Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so.
You just came out of the hospital ten days ago,” Milo reminded him reprovingly. “You can’t keep running into the hospital every time something happens you don’t like. No, the best thing to do is fly the missions. It’s our duty.
One had to know Plato personally to appreciate the love he suppressed puritanically for the music, poetry, and drama he censured in his philosophy and censored in his model communities. They moved him too deeply.
Men,” Colonel Cargill began in Yossarian’s squadron, measuring his pauses carefully. “You’re American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it.
Sinking invalids blew kisses to him from windows. Aproned shopkeepers cheered ecstatically from the narrow doorways of their shops. Tubas crumped. Here and there a person fell and was trampled to death.
If you run into trouble, just tell everybody that the security of the country requires a strong domestic Egyptian-cotton speculating industry.
Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great. We are talking of only a painting.
It’s a small wound. All we have to do is stop the bleeding, clean it out and put a few stitches in.” “But I’ve never had a chance to operate before. Which one is the scalpel? Is this one the scalpel?
You have a morbid aversion to dying.
Opportunity only knocks once in this world,” he would say. Major Major’s father repeated this good joke at every opportunity.
The man who declares that survival at all costs is the end of existence is morally dead, because he’s prepared to sacrifice all other values which give life its meaning. – SIDNEY HOOK.
He could not make them understand that he was a crotchety old fogey of twenty-eight, that he belonged to another generation, another era, another world, that having a good time bored him and was not worth the effort, and that they bored him, too. He could not make them shut up; they were worse than women. They had not brains enough to be introverted and repressed.
All right, I’ll dance with you,” she said, before Yossarian could even speak. “But I won’t let you sleep with me.” “Who asked you?” Yossarian asked her. “You don’t want to sleep with me?” she exclaimed with surprise. “I don’t want to dance with you.
That’s my trouble, you know,” Yossarian mused sympathetically, folding his arms. “Between me and every ideal I always find Scheisskopfs, Peckems, Korns and Cathcarts. And that sort of changes the ideal.
Yossarian left money in the old woman’s lap – it was odd how many wrongs leaving money seemed to right – and.
Why are they going to disappear him?” “I don’t know.” “It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?
Through the lavender gloom clouding the entrance of the operations tent, Yossarian glimpsed Chief White Halfoat, diligently embezzling whiskey rations, forging the signatures of nondrinkers and pouring off the alcohol with which he was poisoning himself into separate bottles rapidly in order to steal as much as he could before Captain Black roused himself with recollection and came hurrying over indolently to steal the rest himself.
It was just before dawn during the Great Big Siege of Bologna, when tongueless dead men peopled the night hours like living ghosts and Hungry Joe was half out of his mind with anxiety because he had finished his missions.
Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it’s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?” “I do,” Dunbar told him. “Why?” Clevinger asked. “What else is there?