For war there is always enough. It’s peace that’s expensive.
Now you’ve given them hope, and they’re unhappy. So the blame is all yours.
The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.
They couldn’t keep Death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady.
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.
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.
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?
The smartest people in Washington are the political reporters. They write about their inferiors.
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.
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.
I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals.
I’m gonna live forever, or die trying.
There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.
Let someone else get killed!
Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?
Well then I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?
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.
But the God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He’s not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.
Fortunately, just when things were blackest, the war broke out.
Just for once I’d like to see all these things sort of straightened out, with each person getting exactly what he deserves. It might give me some confidence in this universe.