Hello and Welcome. This page is a collection of 10 quotes that I liked and saved while reading Catch-22 book by Joseph Heller. I hope you will like them too.
By the way, I am Deepak Kundu, an avid book reader, quotes collector and blogger.
Catch-22 Quotes
- A little grease is what makes this world go round. One hand washes the other. Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
- It takes brains not to make money. Any fool can make money these days and most of them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money.
- Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
- Don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways. 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. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?
- Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so.
- You put so much stock in winning wars. The real trick lies in losing wars, in knowing which wars can be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see how splendidly we’ve done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual state of crisis.
- 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.
- It’s a pretty satisfying experience, pulling rank. You ought to try it sometime.
- I like the way you lie. You’ll go far in this world if you ever acquire some decent ambition.
- Man was matter. Drop him out a 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.