Joseph Heller
:: Catch-22
... Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains ...
"The point is to keep them from dying for as long as you can."
"Yeah, but what's the point, since they all have to die anyway?"
"The trick is not to think about that."
"Never mind the trick. What the hell's the point?"
"You know, that might be the answer - to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail."
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.