Wikidude's Quotes Page #229

Here's the list of quotes submitted by wikidude  —  There are currently 140,397 quotes total — keep up the great work!

Bernard:
Sir Humphrey, he's very worried that he seems responsible for something that he can't change.

Sir Humphrey:
Yes, I'm sure. Responsibility without power: the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Hacker:
Nobody would be able to call me a philistine then!

Dorothy:
Not unless they knew you.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Hacker:
Dorothy, you've got to help me. This is a real hot potato. If I don't do anything, it could turn into a banana skin.

Bernard:
Prime Minister, a hot potato can't become a banana skin.

Hacker:
What?

Bernard:
Well if you don't do anything, a hot potato just becomes a cold potato.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Hacker:
Well of course we'll do what we can, but there are many calls on the public purse, you know. Inner cities, schools, hospitals, kidney machines...

Ladies:
Tanks, rockets, H-bombs.

Hacker:
Well we can't really defend ourselves against the Russians with a performance of "Henry V".

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Hacker:
They do some good.

Sir Humphrey:
They don't, Prime Minister! They hardly do anything at all.

Hacker:
Well let's abolish them!

Sir Humphrey:
No, no, no, no!

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Bill:
There's a lot of terrible publicity if you take [arts money] away. The arts lobby is part of the educated middle class. It's one of the few ways they can get their income tax back. Mortgage tax relief, university grants, lump-sum pensions, Radio 3, and cheap subsidised seats at the theatre, opera and the concerts. You can't begrudge it us... them!

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Sir Humphrey:
You choose from a jumble of ill-digested ideas a version which represents the Prime Minister's views as he would, on reflection, have liked them to emerge.

Bernard:
But if it's not a true record...

Sir Humphrey:
The purpose of minutes is not to record events, it is to protect people. You do not take notes if the Prime Minister says something he did not mean to say, particularly if it contradicts something he has said publicly.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Hacker:
Why is it that ministers can't ever go anywhere without their briefs?

Bernard:
It's in case they get caught with their trousers down.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1981)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

[Standard excuses when faced with serious allegations]

Sir Humphrey:
There's the excuse we used for the Munich Agreement: it occurred before certain important facts were known and couldn't happen again.

Hacker:
What important facts?

Sir Humphrey:
Well, that Hitler wanted to conquer Europe.

Hacker:
I thought everybody knew that.

Sir Humphrey:
Not the Foreign Office.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1981)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

[Why has the Minister been invited to Number 10?]

Sir Humphrey:
Perhaps it is just for a drink, Minister.

Hacker:
Don't be silly, Humphrey. They don't ask you to Number 10 for a drink just because they think you're thirsty!

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1981)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Betty Oldham:
Look, Sir Humphrey, whatever we ask the Minister, he says is an administrative question for you, and whatever we ask you, you say is a policy question for the Minister. How do you suggest we find out what is going on?

Sir Humphrey:
Yes, yes, yes, I do see that there is a real dilemma here. In that, while it has been government policy to regard policy as a responsibility of Ministers and administration as a responsibility of Officials, the questions of administrative policy can cause confusion between the policy of administration and the administration of policy, especially when responsibility for the administration of the policy of administration conflicts, or overlaps with, responsibility for the policy of the administration of policy.

Betty Oldham:
Well, that's a load of meaningless drivel. [pause] Isn't it?

Sir Humphrey:
It's not for me to comment on government policy. You must ask the Minister.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1981)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Sir Humphrey:
It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member’s recollection of them differs violently from every other member’s recollection. Consequently, we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been officially reached even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case, if the decision had been officially reached it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and it isn’t, so it wasn’t.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Bernard:
That's another of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I give confidential press briefings; you leak; he's being charged under section 2A of the Official Secrets Act.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

[Lunch with a newspaper editor]

Hacker:
So I want you to retract that suppression story.

Derek Burnham:
I don't see how I can.

Hacker:
Well, of course you can! You're the editor, aren't you?

Burnham:
Yes, but an editor isn't like a general commanding an army; he's just the ringmaster of a circus. I mean I can book the acts, but I can't tell the acrobats which way to jump!

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Sir Humphrey:
Gratitude is merely a lively expectation of favours to come.

Reference to François de La Rochefoucauld

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Bernard:
The problem is, the prime minister *did* try to suppress the chapter, didn't he.

Sir Humphrey:
I don't know, did he?

Bernard:
Well, didn't he? Don't you remember?

Sir Humphrey:
What I remember is irrelevant, Bernard. If the minutes don't say that he did, then he didn't.

Bernard:
So you want me to falsify the minutes?

Sir Humphrey:
I want nothing of the sort! It's up to you, Bernard - what do you want?

Bernard:
I want to have a clear conscience.

Sir Humphrey:
A clear conscience.

Bernard:
Yes!

Sir Humphrey:
When did you acquire this taste for luxuries?

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Sir Humphrey:
Bernard, if the right people don’t have power, do you know what happens? The wrong people get it: politicians, councillors, ordinary voters!

Bernard:
But aren’t they supposed to, in a democracy?

Sir Humphrey:
This is a British democracy, Bernard!

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Bill:
Well we can hardly hope for that to fall on the right day. Well, not by accident.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Bernard:
I know, what about the death of a cabinet colleague?

Hacker:
Ooh, is one imminent?

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Bernard:
If there was a major crisis, you wouldn't need to go at all.

Hacker:
Is there a major crisis coming up?

Bill:
Not really, Prime Minister.

Hacker:
Is there a distant crisis, that we could bring forward?

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Sir Humphrey:
To put it simply, Prime Minister, certain informal discussions took place involving a full and frank exchange of views out of which there arose a series of proposals, which on examination proved to indicate certain promising lines of inquiry, which, when pursued, lead to the realization that the alternative courses of action might, in fact, in certain circumstances, be susceptible of discreet modification, leading to a reappraisal of the original areas of difference and pointing the way to encouraging possibilities of compromise and cooperation, which, if bilaterally implemented with appropriate give and take on both sides might, if the climate were right, have a reasonable probability at the end of the day of leading, rightly or wrongly, to a mutually satisfactory resolution.

Hacker:
What the hell are you talking about?

Sir Humphrey:
We did a deal.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Bernard:
[on the phone] Yes, we will want simultaneous translators. No, not when the PM meets the leaders of the English-speaking nations. Yes, the English-speaking nations can be said to include the United States. With a certain generosity of spirit.

Bernard:
[on the phone] No we can't have alphabetical sitting in the Abbey, you would have Iran and Iraq sitting together, plus Jordan and Israel all in the same pew, we would be in danger of starting World War Three. No! I know Ireland begins with an I but No! Ireland doesn’t make it any better, Ireland doesn’t make anything any better.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Hacker:
Don't we ever get our own way with the French?

Sir Humphrey:
Well, sometimes.

Hacker:
When was the last time?

Sir Humphrey:
Battle of Waterloo, 1815.

– Yes, Minister, Series Two (1987-88)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

Sir Humphrey:
The ship of state, Bernard, is the only ship that leaks from the top.

– Yes, Minister, Series Three (1982)  Show Quote

added 7 months ago

We need you!

Help us build the largest authors community and quotes collection on the web!

Browse Quotes.net

#ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 

Quiz

Are you a quotes master?

»
Who wrote the Republic?
A Aristotel
B Plato
C Kennedy
D Socrates