The frog is almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its strength and prosperity, with its fighting man that is second to none, and with its standard of living that is highest in the world, will last as long as...the frog?

Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.

How did I get here? Somebody pushed me. Somebody must have set me off in this direction and clus-ters of other hands must have touched themselves to the controls at various times, for I would not have picked this way for the world.

I couldn't see much point in tying myself down to a middle-aged woman with four children, even though the woman was my wife and the children were my own.

But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.

Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all.

The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.