Catch-22

"You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. Youre dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!"

"Milo was not only the Vice-Shah or Oran, as it turned out, but also the Caliph of Baghdad, the Imam of Damascus, and the Sheik of Araby. Milo was the corn god, the rain god and the rice god in backward regions where such crude gods were still worshipped by ignorant and superstitious people, and deep inside the jungles of Africa, he intimated with becoming modesty, large graven images of his mustached face could be found overlooking primitive stone altars red with human blood. Everywhere they touched he was acclaimed with honor, and it was one triumphal ovation after another for him in city after city."

"As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy. "Whos they?" he wanted to know. "Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?" "Every one of them," Yossarian told him. "Every one of whom?" "Every one of whom do you think?" "I havent any idea." "Then how do you know they arent?" "Because …" Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration."

"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 cant all be worth dying for." "Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for." "And everything worth dying for," answered the sacrilegious old man, "is certainly worth living for."

"Appleby was as good at shooting crap as he was at playing Ping-Pong, and he was as good at playing Ping-Pong as he was at everything else. Everything Appleby did, he did well. Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who believed in God, Motherhood, and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of them, and everybody who knew him liked him. "I hate that son of a bitch," Yossarian growled."

"Then there was the educated Texan from Texas who looked like someone in Technicolor and felt, patriotically, that people of means—decent folks—should be given more votes than drifters, whores, criminals, degenerates, atheists and indecent folk—people without means. [...] Dunbar sat up like a shot. "Thats it," he cried excitedly. "There was something missing — and now I know what it is." He banged his fist down into his palm. "No patriotism," he declared. "Youre right," Yossarian shouted back. "Youre right, youre right, youre right. The hot dog, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Moms apple pie. Thats what everyones fighting for. But whos fighting for the decent folk? Whos fighting for more votes for the decent folk? Theres no patriotism, thats what it is. And no matriotism, either." The warrant officer on Yossarians left was unimpressed. "Who gives a shit?" he asked tiredly, and turned over on his side to go to sleep."

"Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, the inoffensive joint squadron operations officers, were both mild, soft-spoken men of less than middle height who enjoyed flying combat missions and begged nothing more of life and Colonel Cathcart than the opportunity to continue flying them. They had flown hundreds of combat missions and wanted to fly hundreds more. They assigned themselves to every one. Nothing so wonderful as war had ever happened to them before; and they were afraid it might never happen to them again."

"Who is Spain?" "Why is Hitler?" "When is right?" "Where was that stooped and mealy-colored old man I used to call Poppa when the merry-go-round broke down?" "Ho-ho beriberi." and "Balls!" all rang out in rapid succession, and then there was Yossarian with the question that had no answer: "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"

"The best squadron in each wing won a yellow pennant on a pole that was utterly worthless. The best squadron on the base won a red pennant on a longer pole that was worth even less, since the pole was heavier and was that much more of a nuisance to lug around all week until some other squadron won it the following Sunday. To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else."

"Colonel Cargill, General Peckems troubleshooter, was a forceful, ruddy man. Before the war he had been an alert, hard-hitting, aggressive marketing executive. He was a very bad marketing executive. Colonel Cargill was so awful a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a dependable man for a fast tax write-off. His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily. He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody."

"To die or not to die, that was the question, and Clevinger grew limp trying to answer it. History did not demand Yossarians premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents."

"All Colonel Cathcart knew about his house in the hills was that he had such a house and hated it. He was never so bored as when spending there the two or three days every other week necessary to sustain the illusion that his damp and drafty stone farmhouse in the hills was a golden palace of carnal delights. Officers’ clubs everywhere pulsated with blurred but knowing accounts of lavish, hushed-up drinking and sex orgies there and of secret, intimate nights of ecstasy with the most beautiful, the most tantalizing, the most readily aroused and most easily satisfied Italian courtesans, film actresses, models and countesses. No such private nights of ecstasy or hushed-up drinking and sex orgies ever occurred. They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him."