“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”
Joseph Heller
One of the very best USA authors, but I can’t recall which of his three books that I read this is taken from. Sounds as if it was the first, “Catch 22”, still a classic fifty years later!