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He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom.
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The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.
Insanity is contagious. This is the only sane ward in the whole hospital. Everybody is crazy but us. This is probably the only sane ward in the whole world, for that matter.”
outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.
Clevinger enumerated Yossarian’s symptoms: an unreasonable belief that everybody around him was crazy, a homicidal impulse to machine-gun strangers, retrospective falsification, an unfounded suspicion that people hated him and were conspiring to kill him.
To regain whatever status he had lost, General Peckem began sending out more U.S.O. troupes than he had ever sent out before and assigned to Colonel Cargill himself the responsibility of generating enough enthusiasm for them. But there was no enthusiasm in Yossarian’s group. In Yossarian’s group there was only a mounting number of enlisted men and officers who found their way solemnly to Sergeant Towser several times a day to ask if the orders sending them home had come in. They were men who had finished their fifty missions. There were more of them now than when Yossarian had gone into the
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They were in a race and knew it, because they knew from bitter experience that Colonel Cathcart might raise the number of missions again at any time. They had nothing better to do than wait.
Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been demoted because he no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not. He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.
In an airplane there was absolutely no place in the world to go except to another part of the airplane.
“Well, maybe it is true,” Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. “Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it’s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?”
Yossarian, we live in an age of distrust and deteriorating spiritual values. It’s a terrible thing,” Doc Daneeka protested in a voice quavering with strong emotion. “It’s a terrible thing when even the word of a licensed physician is suspected by the country he loves.”
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.
“Catch-22,” Doc Daneeka answered patiently, when Hungry Joe had flown Yossarian back to Pianosa, “says you’ve always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to.”
That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of 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.
The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.
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.
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.
people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.
it had taken God only six days to produce the whole world, whereas his wife had spent a full day and a half in labor just to produce Major Major.
Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised that it was good, for he had observed that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people who did not lie.
“The important thing is to keep them pledging,” he explained to his cohorts. “It doesn’t matter whether they mean it or not.
Yossarian wrinkled his forehead with quizzical amusement. “You won’t marry me because I’m crazy, and you say I’m crazy because I want to marry you? Is that right?” “Si.”
There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater, more orderly job of it. They couldn’t dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave.
People bled to death like gentlemen in an operating room or expired without comment in an oxygen tent.
Yossarian felt much safer inside the hospital than outside the hospital, even though he loathed the surgeon and his knife as much as he had ever loathed anyone. He could start screaming inside a hospital and people would at least come running to try to help; outside the hospital they would throw him in prison if he ever started screaming about all the things he felt everyone ought to start screaming about, or they would put him in the hospital. One of the things he wanted to start screaming about was the surgeon’s knife that was almost certain to be waiting for him and everyone else who lived
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“I’ll bet I can name two things to be miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for.”
Why didn’t you turn me in if you knew I was faking?” “Why the devil should I?” asked the doctor with a flicker of surprise. “We’re all in this business of illusion together. I’m always willing to lend a helping hand to a fellow conspirator along the road to survival if he’s willing to do the same for me.
Colonel Cathcart was conceited because he was a full colonel with a combat command at the age of only thirty-six; and Colonel Cathcart was dejected because although he was already thirty-six he was still only a full colonel.
It was one thing to maintain liaison with the Lord, and they were all in favor of that; it was something else, though, to have Him hanging around twenty-four hours a day.
“The syndicate benefits when I benefit,” Milo explained, “because everybody has a share.
“They all belong to the syndicate,” Milo said. “And they know that what’s good for the syndicate is good for the country, because that’s what makes Sammy run.
Everybody but Yossarian thought Milo was a jerk, first for volunteering for the job of mess officer and next for taking it so seriously. Yossarian also thought that Milo was a jerk; but he also knew that Milo was a genius.
Right before their eyes he had transformed his syndicate into an international cartel.
Milo shook his head with weary forbearance. “And the Germans are not our enemies,” he declared. “Oh I know what you’re going to say. Sure, we’re at war with them. But the Germans are also members in good standing of the syndicate, and it’s my job to protect their rights as shareholders. Maybe they did start the war, and maybe they are killing millions of people, but they pay their bills a lot more promptly than some allies of ours I could name. Don’t you understand that I have to respect the sanctity of my contract with Germany? Can’t you see it from my point of view?”
that valve is filled with tiny parts, and I just haven’t got the patience right now to watch you working so hard over things that are so goddam small and unimportant.” “Just because they’re small doesn’t mean they’re unimportant.”
While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it. Don’t you agree?”
But that’s the way things go when you elevate mediocre people to positions of authority.”
“Boy,” he said coldly, “you sure must be in pretty bad shape. You ought to go home.” “They won’t let me.” Yossarian answered with averted eyes, and crept away.
“Aren’t you ever afraid?” “Maybe I ought to be.” “Not even on the missions?” “I guess I just don’t have brains enough.” McWatt laughed sheepishly.
“Why doesn’t he come down?” Yossarian exclaimed in despair. “Why does he keep going up?” “He’s probably afraid to come down,” Sergeant Knight answered, without moving his solemn gaze from McWatt’s solitary climbing airplane.
There were no more beautiful days. There were no more easy missions.
They were the most depressing group of people Yossarian had ever been with. They were always in high spirits.
He could not make them understand that he was a crotchety old fogey of twenty-eight, that he belonged to another generation, another era, another world, that having a good time bored him and was not worth the effort, and that they bored him, too.
The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.”
“They don’t have to show us Catch-22,” the old woman answered. “The law says they don’t have to.” “What law says they don’t have to?” “Catch-22.”
