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Joseph Heller
80 quotes
“I am arrogant enough to wish I were modest as he and modest enough to know that this is arrogance.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?" "There is no heaven. There is no hell." "There is no heaven? There is no hell?" "That's all in your mind.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If character is destiny, the good are damned.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing fails like success.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How dispiriting I find it, even after all my personal triumphs, that we must grow up and grow sad, that we must age, weaken, and in time go home to our long home in the ground, and that even golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one who ever wants praise will be satisfied with praise, the person who wants love cannot be satisfied with love. No want is ever fulfilled. And therefore I still don't know whether it is better to fear God and keep His commandments or to curse God and die.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who steals my purse steals trash, but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed. (Shakespeare's Othello said it first.)”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now THERE'S a hollow state to be in, isn't it — to believe in God and get no sign that He's there.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everybody is as unstable as water.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The last thing any sensible human being should want is immortality. As it is, life lasts too long for most of us.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm not even sure we really had that much need for God as much as we did seem to have a need to believe in Him.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All is vanity, you know, ALL in the long run is but vanity and vexation of spirit.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Vanity. What's wrong with vanity? It doesn't satisfy.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don't you know history?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I imagine that God Himself frequently wants to feel like a king. Why else would He create the world?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God is a murderer, imagine that. I told you I had the best story in the Bible, didn't I? I have always known that He was. Sooner or later He murders us all, doesn't He, and we go back to the dust from which we came. So I'm no longer scared to defy him. All He can do is kill me.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the chance ever comes to you to fall in love, grab it, every time. You might always live to regret it, but you won't find anything to beat it, and you won't know if it will come to you once more.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fools hate knowledge”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is wisdom in madness and strong probability of truth in all accusations, for people are complete and everybody is capable of everything”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God had no need for Ecclesiastes to acquaint Him with vanity.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anyone seeking public office was not worthy to hold it.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She knew Pota had a larger respect for personal privacy than he did for God, Congress, or the U.S. Constitution and never looked at anything there except, occasionally, for the remote control to the television set.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s a big cocktail party on Martha’s Vineyard. Someone comes up to this writer, I think it’s Joseph Heller, and says, “Joe, see that guy over there? He’s a hedge fund manager, and he made more money yesterday than you made on all the books you have ever published.” Heller looks over, pauses, and says, “Yeah, but I have something he’ll never have: enough.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: CNN "Money" Magazine, April 2007, p. 97
“The only wisdom I think I've attained is the wisdom to be skeptical of other people's ideology and other people's arguments. I tend to be a skeptic, I don't like dogmatic approaches by anybody. I don't like intolerance and a dogmatic person is intolerant of other people. It's one of the reasons I keep a distance from all religious beliefs. I think in this country and in Australia too there's a late intolerance in most religions, an intolerance, a part that could easily become persecutions. We have some ultra-orthodox Jewish sects here in New York and I fear them as much as I would fear a Nazi organisation.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In an interview for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "Joseph Heller - Closing Time" (1998) by Ramona Koval
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's 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. 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. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. "This long." He snapped his fingers. "A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man." "Old?" asked Clevinger with surprise. "What are you talking about?" "Old." "I'm not old." "You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?" Dunbar was almost angry when he finished. "Well, maybe it is true," Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. "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?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How ironic the difference between me and my young son Absalom, between his soliciting the soundest means of overtaking me and having my life, while I was cudgeling my brains for a way to spare his. "Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom," were my mawkish words to my commanders as their men trooped past me toward the positions they would take up in the field outside the wood of Ephraim for the battle in which he would die. "Beware that none touch the young man Absalom," I urged like a fool. No, not like a fool, but like a fond, doting father who will overlook and excuse everything in the child he loves best, and who breaks his heart. And in that singular disparity in our desires abides his lasting victory over me: I loved him and he did not love me.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one lusting for blood is ever innocent. Or satisfied. I have not been innocent. Or satisfied. Just as the man who wants silver will not be satisfied with silver, a man who wants the blood of another will not be satisfied with having that blood, nor the woman with jewels be satisfied with jewels, and the man who wants women will not be satisfied with women. Don't try telling me different. Haven't I looked about me in the city and seen how all labor is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not filled? Don't I know myself that no want is ever satisfied? Wishes are granted, goals attained. But wants? Forget them. They live as long as the person they inhabit.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source