Top 200 Joseph Heller Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”

— Joseph Heller

Featured in: Sarcastic Quotes, Trust No One Quotes

2. “There was only one catch and that was catch 22.”

— Joseph Heller

3. “I’m gonna live forever, or die trying.”

— Joseph Heller

4. “Every writer I know has trouble writing.”

— Joseph Heller

5. “It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.”

— Joseph Heller

6. “First impressions die slowly, bad impressions take even longer.”

— Joseph Heller

7. “The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it.”

— Joseph Heller

8. “Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.”

— Joseph Heller

9. “He was never without misery, and never without hope.”

— Joseph Heller

10. “Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.”

— Joseph Heller

11. “He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.”

— Joseph Heller

12. “He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.”

— Joseph Heller

13. “Remember that everyone deserves some fun during working hours.”

— Joseph Heller

Featured in: Fun Quotes

14. “Destiny is a good thing to accept when it’s going your way. When it isn’t, don’t call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.”

— Joseph Heller

15. “I’m not running away from my responsibilities. I’m running to them. There’s nothing negative about running away to save my life.”

— Joseph Heller

16. “When I grow up I want to be a little boy.”

— Joseph Heller

17. “Insanity is contagious.”

— Joseph Heller

18. “Well, he died. You don’t get any older than that.”

— Joseph Heller

19. “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.”

— Joseph Heller

20. “How did I get here? Somebody pushed me. Somebody must have set me off in this direction and clus-ters of other hands must have touched themselves to the controls at various times, for I would not have picked this way for the world.”

— Joseph Heller

21. “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.”

— Joseph Heller

22. “The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”

— Joseph Heller

Featured in: Exercise Quotes, Country Quotes

23. “Why are they going to disappear him?? I don’t know.? It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t even good grammar.”

— Joseph Heller

24. “The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as we could with both of them.”

— Joseph Heller

Featured in: Strong Quotes

25. “I think that maybe in every company today there is always at least one person who is going crazy slowly.”

— Joseph Heller

26. “Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts – and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?”

— Joseph Heller

27. “A man’s head is his castle.”

— Joseph Heller

28. “Let someone else get killed!”

— Joseph Heller

29. “Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.”

— Joseph Heller

30. “When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.”

— Joseph Heller

31. “Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he’s in his office.”

— Joseph Heller

32. “When I read something saying I’ve not done anything as good as ‘Catch-22’ I’m tempted to reply, ‘Who has?’”

— Joseph Heller

33. “She was the epitome of stately sorrow each time she smiled.”

— Joseph Heller

34. “Let’s take a drive into the middle of nowhere with a packet of Marlboro lights and talk about our lives.”

— Joseph Heller

35. “Be glad you’re even alive.? Be furious you’re going to die.”

— Joseph Heller

36. “If character is destiny, the good are damned.”

— Joseph Heller

37. “For war there is always enough. It’s peace that’s expensive.”

— Joseph Heller

38. “The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.”

— Joseph Heller

39. “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.”

— Joseph Heller

40. “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.”

— Joseph Heller

41. “I’ll tell you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning.”

— Joseph Heller

42. “Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.”

— Joseph Heller

43. “I don’t understand the process of imagination-though I know that I am very much at its mercy.”

— Joseph Heller

44. “Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.”

— Joseph Heller

45. “The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.”

— Joseph Heller

46. “I’d rather have peanut brittle crumbs on my face than flies in my eyes,” Havermeyer retorted.”

— Joseph Heller

47. “There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.”

— Joseph Heller

48. “He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret.”

— Joseph Heller

49. “He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.”

— Joseph Heller

50. “Under Colonel Korn’s rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did.”

— Joseph Heller