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Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.

Joseph Heller

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Joseph Heller
Age: 76 †
Born: 1923
Born: May 1
Died: 1999
Died: December 10
Autobiographer
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
People
Thrust
Mediocre
Mediocrity
Humorous
Achieve
Upon
Success
Born

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He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.
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History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind. Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor, and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place their countries at the mercy of Arab oil.
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All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.
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Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did.
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...[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for.
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The night was full of 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.
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Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.
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The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.
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I've come to look upon death the same way I look upon root-canal work. Everyone else seems to get through it all right, so it couldn't be too difficult for me.
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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. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.
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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.
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There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy ... There's a catch. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.
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If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?
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I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy
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I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service.
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Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.
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For war there is always enough. It's peace that's expensive.
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I could not write about a subject sacred to me because I would be too flippant. Fortunately, there are no subjects sacred to me.
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I'll tell you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning
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It is the anonymous they, the enigmatic they who are in charge. Who is they? I don't know. Nobody knows. Not even they themselves.
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