Catch-22 Quotes
Quotes from Joseph Heller's Catch-22
"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
"Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
"They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
"And what difference does that make?"
Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drops bombs on them, and it wasn't funny at all. And if that wasn't funny, there were lots of things that weren't even funnier
"Men," he began his address to the officiers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officiers. The officiers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it."
Doc Daneeka was Yossarian's friend and would do just about nothing to help him.
He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions.
"What would they do to me" he asked in conidential tones, "if I refused to fly them?"
"We'd probably shoot you," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied.
"We?" Yossarian cried in surprise. "What do you mean, we? Since when are you on their side?"
"If you're going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to be on?" ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen retorted.
Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.
The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.
Clevinger recoiled from their hatred as though from a blinding light. These men who hated him spoke his language and wore his uniform, but he saw their loveless faces set immutably into cramped, mean lines of hostility and understood instantly that nowhere in the world, not in the bunkers behind the machine guns or morters or behind the blowing flame throwers, not even among all the expert gunners in the crack Hermann Goering Anti-aircraft Division or among the grisly connivers in all the beer halls in Munich and everywhere else, were there men who hated him more.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
"...Are you absolutely sure you never saw any of these official documents before?"
"I would have signed them if I had."
"With whose name?" asked the second C.I.D. man cunningly. "Your's or Washington Irving's?"
"With my own name," Major Major told him. "I don't even know Washington Irving's name."
The second C.I.D. man broke into a smile.
"Major, I'm glad you're in the clear..."
"...Let somebody else get killed."
"But suppose everybody on our side felt that way."
"Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?"
Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy.
Appleby had been taking four times as many Atabrine tablets as the amount prescribed because he wanted to be four times as good a pilot as everyone else.
To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, he replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to.
If dropping bombs on the enemy was not a special service, he reflected aloud frequently with the martyred smile of sweet reasonableness that was his loyal confederate in every dispute, then he could not help wondering what in the world was.
...threading their swift way through the swolen masses of new and old bursts of flak like rats racing in a pack through their own droppings.
Nateley's mother, a descendant of the New England Thorntons, was a Daugther of the American Revolution. His father was a Son of A Bitch.
"Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry. If we pay the government everything we owe it, we'll only be encouraging government control and discouraging other individuals from bombing their own men and planes."
"Corporal Whitcomb brought me this basic form letter that takes care of just about every situation. Listen: 'Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs.: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, father, or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action.'"
Aarfy was a lead navigator who had never been able to find himself since leaving college.
"...They're not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are they?"
"Who else will go?"
"They didn't have to show us Catch-22," the old woman answered. "The law says they don't have to."
"What law says they don't have to?"
"Catch-22."
Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreads, trample upon or burn up.
Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out the 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.