Joseph Heller Quotes

Most people's lives are nothing more than pointlessly frantic activity used as a psychological defense against their own impotence and fear.

All belief is a cover-up for insecurity

I have never met an aggressive person who wasn’t a fearful person.

So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.

You fear that if you lower your guard for even one second your whole world will disintegrate into chaos

We are not inviting—we are guarded. Most of our energy is spent trying to hide our true selves, and control our worlds to have some sense of security.

The fear of not getting the reward becomes the fear of rejection. The fear of not being good enough... is what makes us try to change, what makes us create an image.

Insecurity's best cover is perfectionism. That's where it becomes an art form.

Cowardice encroaches fast upon such as spend their lives in company of persons higher than themselves.

I had never thought I could love another person this much. I also never thought I’d live in such fear of losing another person. Was this how everyone in love felt? Did they all cling tightly to their beloved and wake up terrified in the middle of the night, afraid of being alone? Was that an inevitable way of life when you loved so deeply? Or was it just those of us who walked on a precipice who lived in such panic?

I find that the vast majority of people who are judging are just fearful or insecure.

O! How vain and vile a passion is this fear! What base uncomely things it makes men do.

I don't believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work and myself and what tortures of self-doubting the doubt of others has always given me.

I'm not good at relationships I always manage to find the flaws sometimes in others but mostly my own. I foretell the ending then go and create the cause save myself and end up alone

We fear the past, present and future. We fear the unknown, we fear not having enough, losing what we have, not having what we want. We fear what will become of us and those that we care for. We fear what others think of us and what they don't think of us. We fear, fear, fear and therefore we are controllable through the manipulation of all that we fear. The present War on Terror is the War of Fear. No Fear, no control.

She said that by introducing me to all these great things, Mary Elizabeth gained a “superior position” that she wouldn’t need if she was confident about herself. She also said that people who try to control situations all the time are afraid that if they don’t, nothing will work out the way they want.

Insecurity refers to a profoud sense of self-doubt-a deep feeling of uncertainty about our basic worth and our place in the world. Insecurity is associated with chronic self-consciousness, along with a chronic lack of confidence in ourselves and anxiety about our relationships. The insecure man or woman lives in constant fear of rejection and a deep uncertainty about whether his or her own feelings and desires are legitimate.

The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is perhaps cowardice.

Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came down to straighten everything out, everyone from hippies to hard-hats would unfold and blossom into the beautiful people they were while I would remain a gnarled little wart in the corner, oozing bile and giving off putrid smells.

With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem.

Did you forget me? Or are you too scared to tell me that you met me in fear that I won't remember?

When I got a tiny bit of success, I was petrified that I was going to lose it. I still feel it.

Fear is vulnerability's ugly little sister.

I am probably afraid that some spectator will not understand my photography - therefore I proceed to make it really less understandable by writing defensibly about it.