Joseph Heller Quotes

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

Men died as she watched, and they didn't care about what they had fought for.

Men who fight wars in winter don't live till spring.

Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.

A hospital alone shows what war is.

War is hell. Hollywood fantasizes about it and makes it look good... war sucks.

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.

I did not want my people killed. I did not want bloodshed.

Do not say that someone has won and someone has lost. These are unappropriate, blasphemous words. We have all been scorched by the deadly breath of fratricide.

On the bastion and entrenchments white flags have been placed, the lowering valley is full of dead bodies, and the beautiful sun descends from the transparent sky to the undulating blue sea, which sparkles under the golden rays of the sun. Thousands of people crowd together, look at, speak to, and smile at each other. And these people, who are Christians, confessing one great law of love and self-sacrifice, looking at what they have done, do not suddenly fall with repentance on their knees before Him who has given them life, who has placed in the soul of each, together with the fear of death, the love of the good and beautiful. They do not embrace like brothers with tears of joy and happiness. No! The white flags are lowered, and again whistle the instruments of death and suffering, again flows innocent blood, and groans and curses are heard

It's always the old to lead us to the war It's always the young to fall Now look at all we've won with the sabre and the gun Tell me is it worth it all.

And when the war is done and youth stone dead I'd toddle safely home and die—in bed.

There's nothing good that comes out of war. It's simply hell on earth, and people survive, and people don't.

In war, everything changes. You are very selective of what you do because everything you do can be the last thing you do in your life.

Dying in a a war never stopped wars from happening.

When I heard your organization was recording testimonies, I knew I had to come. She died in my arms, saying 'I don't want to die.' That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.

Blue is the smoke of wrar, white the bones of men.

What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too. And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.

Zeus it seems has given us from youth to old age a nice ball of wool to wind-nothing but wars upon wars until we shall perish every one.

Living in war is a co- existence with death.

To me, you can't win. You can't win. There's a war in Iraq; there's no way that they're ending that. The war in Afghanistan is still going on. There's no way that's going to end anytime soon. You can complain about it, you can throw rocks at it, but you really have to come to the conclusion that this is a really twisted place sometimes and some stuff you're not going to win.

You've lived through a lot of wars, I said. "Yes." Do they ever make more sense? "No.

War is death's feast.

Morally it makes no difference whether a person is killed in war or condemned to starve by the indifference of others.

War is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate. Therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in the world.