Joseph Heller Quotes

When you go to war, it's important for everybody to know that they're going to come home in one way or other.

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.

News of Churchill. He is said to be in a very depressed state, spending the entire day smoking and drinking. This is the kind of enemy we need.

Generals make plans. Plans go wrong. And soldiers die.

Generals do not always run wars the way they would like to, nor the troops under them.

With such interference in my command I cannot expect to be of much service in the field

Every day, more and more of our young men are shipped to Vietnam and forced to fight under conditions carefully contrived to ensure the maximum loss of American life and to ensure eventual defeat.

There is many a boy here to-day who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell

I tried to read in the faces of the thousands what was in their minds this Easter day. But their faces looked blank. Obviously they do not like the war, but they will do what they’re told. Die, for instance.

It is better to make our enemy's country the theater of war than our own.

I shall hurl the first spear at the foe. If any man can stand at rest while Attila fights, he is a dead man.

In cases of defense, it is best to weigh the enemy more than he seems.

There are only two ways to come back from the battlefield: With the head of an enemy or without your own.

It will plow under every fourth American boy.

In any conflict, the opposing side wants to kill each other, but survive, in order to savor the fruits of victory. But when you have people who are willing to die, they don't want to savor the victory themselves. That willingness to die creates a whole new dynamic. And that, the world has to come to terms with. We have to decide how to deal with that. That activity makes the threat of nuclear terrorism or bioterrorism much more severe, because people who are handling that are not afraid to die, because they think they are going to go to heaven. And that fearlessness about one's own self-preservation creates a totally different situation.

I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy. That was my job that day. That was the mission I was given. I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women and children. They were all classified as the same, and that's the classification that we dealt with over there, just as the enemy. I felt then and I still do that I acted as I was directed, and I carried out the order that I was given and I do not feel wrong in doing so.

A military leader often faces a situation he has to deal with, but because it is his duty, no court can try him.

If you receive a military order you must obey. That is where the big difference between a military and a political order comes in. One can sabotage a political order but to disobey a military command is treason.

There is no such thing as a blockade without you are in war.

In order to function, the United States needs an enemy.

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism—despotism during the campaign—is indispensable.

If there is war with any Barbary State, you will then distribute your force in such a manner, as your judgment shall direct, as to best to protect our commerce and chastise their insolence—by sinking, burning or destroying their ships and vessels wherever you shall find them.

If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame.

I'll take the American empire any day over the empire of … "Islamic fascism." I'm not against fighting this enemy — it is an enemy and I'm not a pacifist.