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141 " I used to think it was immoral to be unhappy. "
― Joseph Heller , Catch-22
142 " ...symptoms: an unreasonable belief that everyone around him was crazy, a homicidal impulse to machine-gun strangers, retrospective falsification, an unfounded suspicion that people hated him and were conspiring to kill him. "
143 " 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. "
144 " i know at last what i want to be when i grow up. when i grow up i want to be a little boy. "
― Joseph Heller , Something Happened
145 " Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we hadn’t a chance of winning. But now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we will certainly come out on top again if we succeed in being defeated. "
146 " I really do admire you a bit. 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." - Colonel Korn "
147 " I'm a regular supra man "
148 " Catch-22 says they have the right to do anything we can't stop them from doing. "
149 " The maid in the lime-color panties... She had a plain broad face and was the most virtuous woman alive: she laid for EVERYBODY, regardless of race, creed, color or place of national origin, donating herself sociably as an act of hospitality, procrastinating not even for the moment it might take to discard the cloth or broom or dust mop she was clutching at the time she was grabbed. Her allure stemmed from her accessibility; like Mt. Everest, she was there, and the men climbed on top of her each time they felt the urge. "
150 " it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything. "
151 " Impressionable men in the squadron like Dobbs and Captain Flume were so deeply disturbed by Hungry Joe's shrieking nightmares that they woudl begin to have shrieking nightmares of their own, and the piercing obscenities they flung into the air every night from their separate places in the squadron rang against each other in the darkness romantically like the mating calls of songbirds with filthy minds. "
152 " Yossarian marveled that children could suffer such barbaric sacrifice without evincing the slightest hint of fear or pain. He took for granted that they did submit so stoically. If not, he reasoned, the custom would certainly have died, for no craving for wealth or immortality could be so great, he felt, as to subsist on the sorrow of children. "
153 " He was a spry, suave and very precise general who knew the circumference of the equator and always wrote "enhanced" when he meant "increased." He was a prick. "
154 " And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways," Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. "There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. "
155 " She destroyed egos by the score and made men hate themselves in the morning by the way she found them, used them, and tossed them aside. "
156 " People have a right to do anything that's not forbidden by law, and there's no law against lying to you. "
157 " His response to them [women] as sexual beings was one of frenzied worship and idolatry. They were lovely, satisfying, maddening manifestations of the miraculous, instruments of pleasure too powerful to be measured, too keen to be endured, and too exquisite to be intended for employment by base, unworthy man. "
158 " Maybe I am senile already and people are too kind to tell me. People are not kind and would tell me. (Maybe people have told me, and I'm too senile to remember). "
159 " He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom. "
160 " Group headquarters was alarmed, for there is no telling what people might find out once they felt felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to. Colonel Cathcart sent Colonel Korn to stop it, and Colonel Korn succeeded with a rule governing the asking of questions. Colonel Korn's rule was a stroke of genius, Colonel Korn explained in his report to Colonel Cathcart. Under Colonel Corn's rule the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did. Soon the only people attending [sessions] were those who never asked questions, and the sessions were discontinued altogether, since Clevinger, the corporal and Colonel Korn agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything. "