Committees Quotes

1. "The capital ... shall form a fund, the interest of which shall be distributed annually as prizes to those persons who shall have rendered humanity the best services during the past year. ... One-fifth to the person having made the most important discovery or invention in the science of physics, one-fifth to the person who has made the most eminent discovery or improvement in chemistry, one-fifth to the one having made the most important discovery with regard to physiology or medicine, one-fifth to the person who has produced the most distinguished idealistic work of literature, and one-fifth to the person who has worked the most or best for advancing the fraternization of all nations and for abolishing or diminishing the standing armies as well as for the forming or propagation of committees of peace."
Author: Alfred Nobel

2. "They sit there in committees day after day, And they each put in a color and it comes out gray. And we all have heard the saying, which is true as well as witty, That a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee."
Author: Allan Sherman

3. "We have almost a city has probably two or three hundred committees. Every committee is dealing with just one problem and has nothing to do with the other problems."
Author: Alvar Aalto

4. "Even better, there were established two separate committees deciding on state film funding."
Author: Andrzej Wajda

5. "Public money should be spent on art but through individuals not committees."
Author: Antony Gormley

6. "If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself."
Author: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

7. "A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn."
Author: C. Northcote Parkinson

8. "The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one's stomach than of one's nation."
Author: Catherynne M. Valente

9. "Many of these policies were proposed by wonks who are comfortable only with traits and correlations that can be measured and quantified. They were passed through legislative committees that are as capable of speaking about the deep wellsprings of human action as they are of speaking in ancient Aramaic. They were executed by officials that have only the most superficial grasp of what is immovable and bent about human beings. So of course they failed. And they will continue to fail unless the new knowledge about our true makeup is integrated more fully into the world of public policy, unless the enchanted story is told along with the prosaic one."
Author: David Brooks

10. "You don't want atheism shoved down your throat? OK. We will stock knocking on doors spreading our ‘Truth,' and having tax-exempt organizations dedicated to atheism that have influential political action committees. We will also stop printing ‘In atheism we trust' on all US currency and saying, ‘One nation, under atheism" in the pledge of allegiance. We will also stop insisting that everyone who disagrees with us will be sentence to eternal damnation… Wait…"
Author: David G. McAfee

11. "Committees can criticize, but they cannot create."
Author: David Ogilvy

12. "Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them."
Author: David Ogilvy

13. "I want to say that further you are not a great chief of this country. That you have no following, no power, no control." Logan continued, "You are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government. You are fed by the government, clothed by the government, your children are educated by the government, and all you have and are today is because of the government. If it were not for the government you would be freezing and starving today in the mountains. I merely say these things to notify you that you cannot insult the people of the United States of America or its committees ...the government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men.-Senator John Logan, 1883"
Author: Dee Brown

14. "First of all, let it be remembered that I speak as an ex-Communist and one who has not testified before Congressional Committees, nor written works on the Communist conspiracy."
Author: Dorothy Day

15. "The spread of BSE [mad cow disease] in Europe has revealed how secret alliances between agribusiness and government can endanger the public health. It has shown how the desire for profit can overrule every other consideration. British agricultural officials were concerned as early as 1987 that eating meat from BSE-infected cattle might pose a risk to human beings. That information was suppressed for years, and the possibility of any health risk was strenuously denied, in order to protect exports of British beef. Scientists who disagreed with the official line were publicly attacked and kept off government committees investigating BSE. Official denials of the truth delayed important health measures."
Author: Eric Schlosser

16. "Only under conditions of revolutionary crises do you have the highest level of self-organization; this is the Soviet type of organization, which is to say, workers' councils, people's councils, call them what you want, popular committees."
Author: Ernest Mandel

17. "As Mayor, I will fully support my Arts Commission and its professional selection committees so that they can commission a full range of public art that is daring and, when appropriate, daringly traditional."
Author: Gavin Newsom

18. "I owe all my originality, such as it is, to my determination not to be a literary man. Instead of belonging to a literary club I belong to a municipal council. Instead of drinking and discussing authors and reviews, I sit on committees with capable practical greengrocers and bootmakers... Keep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh."
Author: George Bernard Shaw

19. "It was also my idea that the advisory committees of the Academy should replace the legal committees of the German Reichstag, which was gradually fading into the background in the Reich."
Author: Hans Frank

20. "A surprising number of government committees will make important decisions on fundamental matters with less attention than each individual would give to buying a suit."
Author: Herman Kahn

21. "The Nobel award occasions a unique celebration of the vision of science by the public at large. The prestige the prize confers today is largely due to the extraordinary diligence of the Nobel committees."
Author: Kenneth G. Wilson

22. "I also served on many government committees."
Author: Leo Baekeland

23. "I think any advocate who is effective has fully acquainted himself or herself with the legislator they are going to meet. Know what committees they are on, what issues they are interested in, all in an effort to build a bridge for communicating with them."
Author: Mark Shields

24. "India had a very long independence movement. It started in 1886, [with] the first generation of Western-educated Indians. They were all liberals. They followed the Liberal Party in Britain, and they were very proud of their knowledge of parliamentary systems, parliamentary manners. They were big debaters. They [had], as it were, a long apprenticeship in training for being in power. Even when Gandhi made it a mass movement, the idea of elective representatives, elected working committees, elected leadership, all that stayed because basically Indians wanted to impress the British that they were going to be as good as the British were at running a parliamentary democracy. And that helped quite a lot."
Author: Meghnad Desai

25. "And everything is controlled and everybody is a member of some committee, because then their watchdogs placed in the committees can control everything, what this person says or how this person think(s), you know."
Author: Milos Forman

26. "Among the weeds choking out growth and good government are the hundreds of boards, commissions, and advisory committees that have sprouted over the years. They devour time, money, and energy far beyond any real contribution they make."
Author: Mitch Daniels

27. "Committees kill unconventional ideas for a living."
Author: Mokokoma Mokhonoana

28. "I have to know you'll be happy; have what you want,what you can live with. I want forever from you.""All right." Shelby lifted her hands to his wrists, holding them a moment before she backed away. "I considered the possibilties," she began. "I thought through all the ifs and the maybes.I didn't like all of them, but the one I hated the most was life without you. You're not going to play Parcheesi without me, MacGregor."His brow lifted. "I'm not?""No." She brushed at her bangs with another unsteady laugh. "Marry me, Alan. I won't agree with all your policies, but I'll try to be tactful in print-some of the time. I won't head any committees, and I'll only go to luncheons if there's no way out, but my own career's an understandable excuse for that. I won't give conventional parties, but I'll give interesting ones If you're willing to take the risk of setting me loose on world politics, who am I to argue?"He hadn't thought he could love her any more than he already did. He'd been wrong."
Author: Nora Roberts

29. "For many years I have advocated 'redesigning Parliament' in a variety of ways - elect the Senate, do away with the 'confidence convention,' permit freer voting, strengthen the role of back benchers and committees, do away with ineffectual 'take note' debates, restructure question period, and so on."
Author: Preston Manning

30. "I hated teaching composition. I was playing music I didn't particularly want to play, being on committees I didn't want to be on."
Author: Richard Rodney Bennett

31. "Or the Department of Education and another ministry were worried about duplication of effort, so what did they do? They set up two committees to look into duplication and neither knew what the other was up to. It really is a world beyond parody."
Author: Rory Bremner

32. "Without bureaus, committees, officials or emissaries to manufacture sentiment in his favor, without intrigue or effort on his part, Grant is the candidate whose supporters have never threatened to bolt."
Author: Roscoe Conkling

33. "Reclaimed by the small-time day-to-day, pretending life is Back To Normal, wrapping herself shivering against contingency's winter in some threadbare blanket of first-quarter expenses, school committees, cable-bill irregularities, a workday jittering with low-life fantasies for which "fraud" is often too elegant a term, upstairs neighbors to whom bathtub caulking is an alien concept, symptoms upper-respiratory and lower-intestinal, all in the quaint belief that change will always be gradual enough to manage, with insurance, with safety equipment, with healthy diets and regular exercise, and that evil never comes roaring out of the sky to explode into anybody's towering delusions about being exempt. . ."
Author: Thomas Pynchon

34. "Pnin slowly walked under solemn pines. The sky was dying. He did not believe in an autocratic God. He did believe, dimly, in a democracy of ghosts. The souls of the dead, perhaps, formed committees, and these, in continuous session, attended the destinies of the quick."
Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Committees Quotes Pictures