Best 23 quotes in «catch 22 quotes» category

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.

He smiled ostentatiously to show himself reasonable and nice. "I'm not saying that to be cruel and insulting," he continued with cruel and insulting delight.

A term came to her that they used on occasion at the shelter: the double bind...They used the expression in much the same way that they would use a term like catch-22.

​Dharma or Ethics and Morals are the Fundamental Set of Rules created for those who want to Play the Game, by those who are Inside the Game.

Four times during the first six days they were assembled and briefed and then sent back. Once, they took off and were flying in formation when the control tower summoned them down. The more it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they suffered, the more they prayed that it would continue raining. All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars. All through the day, they looked at the bomb line on the big, wobbling easel map of Italy that blew over in the wind and was dragged in under the awning of the intelligence tent every time the rain began. The bomb line was a scarlet band of narrow satin ribbon that delineated the forward most position of the Allied ground forces in every sector of the Italian mainland. For hours they stared relentlessly at the scarlet ribbon on the map and hated it because it would not move up high enough to encompass the city. When night fell, they congregated in the darkness with flashlights, continuing their macabre vigil at the bomb line in brooding entreaty as though hoping to move the ribbon up by the collective weight of their sullen prayers. "I really can't believe it," Clevinger exclaimed to Yossarian in a voice rising and falling in protest and wonder. "It's a complete reversion to primitive superstition. They're confusing cause and effect. It makes as much sense as knocking on wood or crossing your fingers. They really believe that we wouldn't have to fly that mission tomorrow if someone would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and move the bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine? You and I must be the only rational ones left." In the middle of the night Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to move the bomb line up over Bologna.

He was one of those people with lots of intelligence but no brains

High altitude astronomy is a catch 22: Stay inside the observatory and get high altitude observatory disease (HAOD) or go outside and get radiation sickness. Either way, the sea level adapted human may develop sickness.

How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast.

Of course you're dying. We're all dying. Where the devil else do you think you're heading?

Nobody would have anything to do with him. He began to drop things and to trip. He had a shy and hopeful manner in each new contact, and he was always disappointed. Because he NEEDED a friend so desperately, he never found one.

Sure, there’s a catch,” Doc Daneeka replied. “Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy.

The book was thick and red. It was almost thicker than it was wide, a thickness that somehow enhanced its bookishness. It was - to me aged 12 - quite clearly more of a book than most, if not all, of the paperbacks untidily stacked on the shelves of my father's study.

The awkwardness of getting reward in a well-off society is that the creation of appetite often requires undoing the work of satisfying appetite.

They were the most depressing group of people Yossarian had ever been with. They were always in high spirits.

These days about the worst job you can have is be a US military man. It's so shameful. You're so expensive, yet so completely useless. You know you can't fuck with Russia because they'll just start blowing nukes up for shits and giggles. And you can fuck with China because they probably have a shitton of biological weapons stashed in every Chinatown to take out most US population very, very quickly. At least that’s what I would do, and THEY are a lot smarter than I am. So you keep busy and pretend to be useful by killing Arabs in caves and shit, cuz that seems like a pretty low risk adventure. but... even that's gonna come back and bite you in the Ass eventually... these things usually do...

They'll have to try like hell to catch me this time. They will try like hell. And even if they don't find you, what kind of way is that to live? You'll always be alone, no one will ever be on your side, and you'll always live in danger of betrayal. I live that way now. But you can't just turn your back on all your responsibilities and run away from them, Major Danby insisted. It's such a negative mood. It's escapist. Yossarian laughed with buoyant scorn and shook his head. I'm not running away from my responsibilities. I'm running to them. There's nothing negative about running away to save my life." Hetson: As I said in class, a lot of critics find that moment too sentimental. An author ham-fistedly reaching in and injecting an amoral tale with a moral. An embarrassing betrayal of all the dark comedy that came before it. But me? I've always kind of liked it. It has such a nice, hopeful ring to it. Do you see my point?

The night was filled with horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts, like a victim through a prison full of thieves. What a welcome sight a leper must have been!

The spirit gone, man is garbage.

They’re not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are they?” “Who else will go?

We anticipate Time, and welcome it when birth comes in the door, then we hate Time and curse it, when death exits the door.

White males can't win these days - if they have something, they're "privileged" and if they want something, they're displaying "entitlement.

Who is Spain? Why is Hitler? Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?

You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. But it’s a catch-22: all of those things that you’re willing to lose are what make you recognizable. Lose them, and you've lost yourself.