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When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, "Who has?"

— Joseph Heller The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations (1997)

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Good and Evil

More quotes by Joseph Heller

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.

Catch-22 (1961)

He could never decide whether to furgle them or photograph them, for he had found it impossible to do both simultaneously.

Catch-22 (1961)

Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.

Catch-22 (1961)

Outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.

Catch-22 (1961)

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?

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False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Socrates

I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

Edward Teller

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Joseph Heller (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.