Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller
Joseph Hellerwas an American satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. The title of one of his works, Catch-22, entered the English lexicon, to refer to a vicious circle, wherein an absurd, no-win, contradictory choice, particularly in situations in which the desired outcome of the choice is a bureaucratic, or legal impossibility for artificial reasons, and hence, then regardless of the chosen option, a paradoxically negative outcome is a certainty. Although he is remembered primarily for Catch-22, his other works...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 May 1923
CountryUnited States of America
I think in every country that there is at least one executive who is scared of going crazy.
Surely there can't be so many countries worth dying for.' Anything worth living for,' said Nately, 'is worth dying for.' And anything worth dying for,' answered the sacrilegious old man, '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.
History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind. Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor, and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place their countries at the mercy of Arab oil.
The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as ""Catch-22"" I'm tempted to reply, ""Who has?
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.
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.
My drawings have been described as pre-intentionalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point.
...[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for.
Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.
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.
Some men are born Mediocre men, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them
For war there is always enough. It's peace that's expensive.