C.F. Heller Quotes

It's a wise person, I guess, who knows he's dumb, and an honest person who knows he's a liar. And it's a dumb person, I guess, whose convinced he's wise...-Bob Slocum

Let someone else get killed!

Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?

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.

I don't believe in miracles because it's been a long time since we've had any.

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.

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?

Well, he died. You don't get any older than that.

I am miracle ingredient Z-247. I'm immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman.

He was never without misery, and never without hope.

He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret

Only Hungry Joe had something better to do each time he finished his missions. He had screaming nightmares and won fist fights with Huple's cat.

When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.

You're an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I'm an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I'm in an ideal position to appreciate it.

Why are they going to disappear him?' I don't know.' It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar.

Men," he began his address to the officers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it.

There are yawning gulfs into which large chunks of me have fallen. I do not always know where I am at present.

If a man is going to leave one wife to marry another, it's better if he divorces the first before he marries the second.

My advice for anyone wanting to direct is that nobody is going to hand you an opportunity. You have to create your own opportunities and not take no for an answer.

There is no one to tell this to and yet it seems very important to get this right. The reality and what it is like to escape it. That even now it is sometimes too beautiful to bear.

Meager as it is. Nothing to lose as I have. Nothing is something somehow.

She's a surprise this old earth, one big surprise after another since before she separated from the moon who circles and circles like the mate of a shot goose.

Dont pretend to be that small, you are not that great!

Think before you act: it's not your money.

The easiest way of making money is to stop losing it.

Cash in must exceed cash out.

Without the right attitude, a business with everything going for it will fail.

Successful innovation has consistently proved to be fluid and flexible, fast and furious - that is, passionate.

Most people don't manage to the utmost of their ability because they don't want to.

Either an executive can do his job or he can't.

No decision in business provides greater potential for the creation of wealth (or its destruction, come to think of it) than the choice of which innovation to back.

Here lies one of the world's rare generalized TINAs. There Is No Alternative to creativity and innovation: these days, obscurantism and conservatism will do for you every time.

Things have to be made to happen in a way you want them to happen. Without management, without the intervention of organized willpower the desired result simply cannot be obtained.

No talent in management is worth more than the ability to master facts-not just any facts, but the ones that provide the best answers.

All good management is the expression of one great idea

No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.

Management capability is always less than the organization actually needs.

If you are doing something wrong, you will do it badly.

If you are attempting the impossible, you will fail.

If sophisticated calculations are needed to justify an action, don't do it.

Managers are to information as alcoholics are to booze. They consume enormous amounts, constantly crave more, but have great difficulty in digesting their existing intake.

Waiting for supply-side economics to work is like leaving the landing lights on for Amelia Earhart.

Rise above principle and do what is right.

When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence.

...what is romance, but a mutual pact of delusion? When the pact ends , there's nothing left.

It's hard to resist the magical thinking that the work habits of great writers are the key to their greatness.

If everybody was so reverent of the institute of marriage, how did all the adultery get committed?

When I tried to do something else, everyone behaved as if I was Gypsy Rose Lee trying to paint a Matisse.

[Chief White Halfoat:] Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It's a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nig*er, kike, wop, or spic.

General Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform so they'll make a good impression on the enemy when they're shot down".