Committees Quotes

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. ~ Milos Forman

The more committees you belong to, the less of ordinary life you will understand. When your daily round becomes nothing more than a daily round of committees you might as well be dead. ~ Stella Benson

Almost all modern governments are highly conscious of what journalism calls 'world opinion.' For sound reasons, mostly of an economic nature, they cannot afford to be condemned in the United Nations, they do not like to be visited by Human Rights Commissions or Freedom of the Press Committees; their need of foreign investment, foreign loans, foreign markets, satisfactory trade relationships, and so on, requires that they be members in more or less good standing of a larger community of interests. Often, too, they are members of military alliances. Consequently, they must maintain some appearance of stability, in order to assure the other members of the community or of the alliance that contracts will continue to be honored, that treaties will be upheld, that loans will be repaid with interest, that investments will continue to produce profits and be safe. "Protracted internal war threatens all of this ... no ally wishes to treat with a government that is on the point of eviction. ~ Sebastian Marshall

An optimist is somebody who thinks our various political and social systems, schools and churches, support groups and Boy Scout troops, jury trials and congressional committees, are on the up-and-up. That they are intended for the benefit of the members. The reality is that they are designed to keep everyone in line. ~ Jack McDevitt

A single vision is more perfect than a committee vision because with everyone having their say, it becomes compromised. ~ Karl Pilkington

In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquium, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world's oldest problems in its newest nomenclature. ~ Amor Towles

Every advance in information technology involves choosing what you want to preserve and what you want to ditch. Scanning rare books on to microfilm is a costly business. The library won't let you do it yourself - they decide first which books should be scanned and which should just rot away in the basement.
Against that eventuality, people should start hoarding the kind of books committees of rational people will decide against scanning into a database. ~ Robert Twigger

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. ~ Mitch Daniels

As soon as I got out of jail, as soon as my trial was over, first of all, during the time I was in jail, there was an organization called the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, and I insisted that it be called National United Committee to Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners. ~ Angela Davis

I'm going to help the committee regardless of any position I have. I will volunteer to be a summer intern. ~ Trey Gowdy

But to hear Kennedy when he was grandstanding in front of the McClellan Committee you might have thought I was making as much out of the pension fund as the Kennedys made out of selling whiskey. ~ Jimmy Hoffa

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. ~ Preston Manning

The president has the right to select who he wants for the Supreme Court. He doesn't have to get it cleared from Congress, Senate or anybody ... No president before this has come under this kind of scrutiny ... before the committee hearings even begin. ~ Montel Williams

There is no more great men; there is only great committees. ~ Marshall McLuhan

We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents
but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards
and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children. ~ Urie Bronfenbrenner

It's interesting that at a time when she could have differentiated herself from the ranks of [Democratic National Committee Chairman] Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi and the far left ranks of the Democratic Party, she chose to join those on the front ranks of the blame game, It would have been interesting if she had shown some level of restraint. ~ Brian Jones

There is not a revolution that succeeded in a few months. It takes years, even decades, to fulfill its goals. I am very hopeful because I trust the revolution and feel nobody can really conquer a nation that has decided to be united and to fight, and we decided to fight. The revolution is there, inside the Egyptians by the millions. ~ Nawal El Saadawi

Despite my inability to qualify to qualify in South Africa, I did really appreciate the support I got from the IOC particularly the Olympic Solidarity, members of the ICF, my own National Olympic Committee, friends and athletes from the Slalom Community. When I got the wild card, it was the cherry on the cake that I could not have imagined. It was much more than I expected for myself. ~ Benjamin Boukpeti

We have more brilliant fantasy novels than brilliant fantasy movies. Movies and TV are done by committee. But with a novel, it's really just one person running the show. That allows for a clarity and unity of vision that's pretty unique, artistically. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

He gave them advice in media relations and arbitration technique, he told them how to organize cells and committees, to elect leaders. They were so ignorant! Young men and women, educated very carefully to be apolitical, to be technicians who thought they disliked politics, making them putty in the hands of their rulers, just like always. It was appalling how stupid they were, really, and he could not help lashing into them. He left to cheers. ~ Anonymous

His own children were not members of the Clemson incoming freshman class, but two of his nieces and a nephew were. On the news, he outlined his problems with the summer-reading committee's selection. The book talks in graphic terms about pornography, about fetish, about masturbation, about multiple sex partners . . . The book contains a very extensive list of over-the-top sexual and antireligious references. The explicit message that this sends to students is that they are encouraged to find themselves sexually. ~ Ann Patchett

Our world today is in need of peace, tolerance and brotherhood. The values of the Olympic Games can deliver these to us. May the Games be held in peace, in the true spirit of the Olympic Truce. Athletes of the 80 national Olympic committees, show us that sport unites by overcoming national, political, religious and language barriers. You can show us a world we all long for. ~ Jacques Rogge

If the Palestinian Olympic Committee or Palestinian Federation provide good facilities to the athletes then maybe I can become better than these Bahraini or Qatari athletes. ~ Nader Al-Masri

Unfortunately, marketing textbooks is like marketing fishing lures: the point is to catch fishermen, not fish. Thus many adopted textbooks are flashy to catch the eye of adoption committees but dull when read by students. ~ James W. Loewen

I guess for major film industry players a film is a money making devise, so using formulas assures them that their investment will have returns. A lot of big studio films are created by formulas and committees, stripping away any individuality or personality from the work so that they could appeal to most everyone on there planet but to no one in particular. ~ Signe Baumane

I was the chairman of the House Budget Committee and one of the chief architects the last time we balanced a budget, and it was the first time we had done it since man walked on the moon. We had a $5 trillion surplus and we cut taxes. ~ John Kasich

There is a whole school of thought that holds bureaucracy tends to expand according to a kind of perverse but inescapable inner logic. The argument runs as follows: if you create a bureaucratic structure to deal with some problem, that structure will invariably end up creating other problems that seem as if they, too, can only be solved by bureaucratic means. In universities, this is sometimes informally referred to as the "creating committees to deal with the problem of too many committees" problem. ~ David Graeber

I've come to feel very strongly, not as a joke, that if you appoint a committee of more than four people, their efficiency starts to deteriorate. ~ Charlton Heston

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. ~ George Bernard Shaw

It is galling to see such mendacious hypocrites as Kennedy and Biden at the Senate Judiciary Committee sitting in judgment on distinguished jurists. ~ Conrad Black

It is well known that the Nobel Committees bring world opinion to a focus, and that fact still further enhances the prestige attaching to the Prizes. ~ Robert Robinson

Well, you have to remember that until 1948, when Hubert Humphrey and others forced the Democratic Party to adopt a new policy on civil rights, the Democratic Party was the party of the old solid South. All of the racists, all of the Cottonhead Smith types and so on were Democrats, allies of Franklin Roosevelt - because of their seniority - of all the major committees of the Congress. ~ William A. Rusher

Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers. ~ Shepherd Mead

Can anything be more Un-American than the Un-American committee? ~ Burt Lancaster

If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it. ~ Charles Kettering

We always had a central committee. They were mesmerized by Eldridge Cleaver. ~ Huey Newton

They've done away with those committees. That shows the success of what the Soviets were able to do in this country. ~ Ronald Reagan

I am thankful to the Nobel committee for recognising the plight of millions of children who are suffering in this modern age. ~ Kailash Satyarthi

What worthwhile book after the Pentateuch has been written by a committee? ~ George Steiner

Whenever a controversy arises over sexual or reproductive morals, you can bet that religious leaders from several different faith groups will be prominently represented on influential committees, or on panel discussions on radio or television. ~ Richard Dawkins

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. ~ Meghnad Desai

Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better. ~ Peter Drucker

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. ~ Roscoe Conkling

A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but who, as a group, can meet and decide that nothing can be done. ~ Fred Allen

The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. ~ Raymond Chandler

A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. ~ Fred Brooks

The information that follows is taken primarily ... from government hearings and reports published from various Senate and House committees. ~ G. Edward Griffin

Different people define "the good life" in different ways. To me, the good life includes active participation in family, church and community. It means making time for playing with kids, teaching them important religious and moral principles in the home, going to church with them and spending enough time with them that they know you care. It requires being a partner with your spouse, allowing him or her to grow in her own right, to spread her wings and fly. It includes participating in the community -- committees, service, voting, perhaps public office. It means having enough financial base that there is some flexibility in life, without which the previous activities just described are very limited. ~ Kenneth Ross French

There have been a couple of instances prior to now where members of the House have filed resolutions calling for release of the sealed files which were developed during the course of our committee's investigation. ~ Louis Stokes

Congressional investigations ... are still being held on the problem of unidentified flying objects and the problem is one in which there is quite a bit of interest ... Since most of the material presented to the committee is classified, the hearings are never printed. ~ William Hanes Ayres

All these teachers and [screenwriting] books mean you see movies that have been worked over by more committees wielding more rules, that all originality and authorship is lost. That's why you're seeing superstars like Brad Pitt in THE FIGHT CLUB and Tom Cruise in MAGNOLIA. They're desperately searching for people writing and directing off-formula movies. ~ Paul Schrader

Outside of traffic, there is nothing that has held this country back as much as committees. ~ Will Rogers

I assure this committee that, if I am confirmed, I will be strictly independent of all political influences ... essential to that institution's ability to function effectively and achieve its mandated objectives. ~ Ben Bernanke

Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues. ~ Mark Twain

During all these years I have been enabled to trust in the living God alone. In answer to prayer $7,500,000 have been sent to me. We have needed as much as $200,000 in one year, and it has all come when needed. No man can ever say I asked him for a penny. We have no committees, no collectors, no voting, and no endowment. All has come in answer to believing prayer. ~ Charles R. Parsons

May the spirit of devotion to duty which inspires us always dominate this Committee's conferences! ~ Gustav Krupp

Committee - a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours. ~ Milton Berle

Safeguarding the interests of our Taiwan compatriots and expanding their well-being is the mainland's oft-repeated pledge and solemn promise of the new leaders of China's Communist Party central committee. ~ Xi Jinping

Even if I'd stayed [in the US to finish 'The Magnificent Ambersons'] I would've had to make compromises on the editing, but these would've been mine and not the fruit of confused and often semi-hysterical committees. If I had been there myself I would have found my own solutions and saved the pictures in a form which would have carried the stamp of my own effort. ~ Orson Welles

Not even Sen. [Joseph] McCarthy was able to repress ideas he opposed as effectively as Harvard's hiring committees have suppressed the conservative viewpoints they despise and fear. ~ David Horowitz

These diagnostic profiles like depression, ADHD, autism, dyslexia, it's half science and the other half is a committee of doctors bickering over what it should be, and it has changed. It's not precise like a diagnosis of tuberculosis would be very precise. ~ Temple Grandin

I think ultimately audience members like to see someone controlling the quality of a film. A lot of films you see are made by committees and studios and producers. ~ John Carney

Committees are, by nature, timid. They are based on the premise of safety in numbers; content to survive inconspicuously, rather than take risks and move independently ahead. Without independence, without the freedom for new ideas to be tried, to fail, and to ultimately succeed, the world will not move ahead, but rather live in fear of it's own potential ~ Ferdinand Porsche

The "Ways & Means Committee" is a committee that's supposed to find the Ways to divide up the Means. ~ Will Rogers

Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a deal breaker. ~ Seth Godin

In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. 'Search the parks in all your cities You'll find no statues of committees. ~ David Ogilvy

In 1969 my parents, my sister, my brother Jin-ming, and I were expelled from Chengdu one after another, and sent to distant parts of the Sichuan wilderness. We were among millions of urban dwellers to be exiled to the countryside.

In this way, young people would not be roaming the cities with nothing to do, creating trouble out of sheer boredom, and adults like my parents would have a 'future." They were part of the old administration which had been replaced by Mao's Revolutionary Committees, and packing them off to the sticks to do hard labor was a convenient solution.

According to Mao's rhetoric, we were sent to the countryside 'to be reformed." Mao advocated 'thought reform through labor' for everyone, but never explained the relationship between the two. Of course, no one asked for clarification. Merely to contemplate such a question was tantamount to treason. In reality, everyone in China knew that hard labor, particularly in the countryside, was always punishment. It was noticeable that none of Mao's henchmen, the members of the newly established Revolutionary Committees, army officers and very few of their children had to do it.

The first of us to be expelled was my father. Just after New Year 1969 he was sent to Miyi County in the region of Xichang, on the eastern edge of the Himalayas, an area so remote that it is China's satellite launch base today. It lies about 300 miles from Chengdu, four days' journey by truck, as there was no ~ Jung Chang

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 ~ Dee Brown

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. ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

I want to make it clear publicly that I expect more candor from this Administration during the next four years, particularly with members on the Foreign Relations Committee so that we can maintain a bipartisan foreign policy. ~ George Voinovich

I hold no brief for Communists, but I believe in and will defend their right to act independently within the law. I question whether members of the committee are interested in defending our form of government or whether they are attempting to suppress political opinion at odds with their own. ~ Gregory Peck

Avoid committees and consensus in developing big, distinctive business model advantages. Individuals have big, distinctive ideas; committees and consensus turn big, distinctive ideas into mundane ideas. ~ Bob Herbold

The committee's finding that China stole sensitive technology from U.S. weapons research labs is alarming. ~ Charles Bass

Shara now sits on committees that decide who shall be nominated to be committee chairs for other committees; then, after these meetings, she sits on committee meetings to formulate agendas for future meetings; and after these, she attends committee meetings deciding who shall be appointed to appoint appointments to committees. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett

The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs. ~ Celia Green

The cat joined the Re-education Committee and was very active in it for some days. She was seen one dag sitting on a roof and talking to some sparrows who were just out of her reach. She was telling them that all animals were now comrades and that any sparrow who chose could come and perch on her paw; but the sparrows kept their distance. ~ George Orwell

I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it. ~ John Le Carre

The Coventry School Committee has been ahead of the curve in addressing the nutrition needs of our students. This committee is an extension of a process begun more than a year ago to ensure the foods we offer had high nutritional value. ~ Michael Reeves

These are the daily annoyances, the subtle messages of whiteness. But we bear other scars, too. Over and over I have seen white men and women get praise for their gifts and skills while women of color are told only about their potential for leadership. When white people end up being terrible at their jobs, I have seen supervisors move mountains to give them new positions more suited to their talents, while people of color are told to master their positions or be let go. I have been in the room when promises were made to diversify boardrooms, leadership teams, pastoral staff, faculty and staff positions, only to watch committees appoint a white man in the end. It's difficult to express how these incidents accumulate, making you feel undervalued, underappreciated, and ultimately expendable. ~ Austin Channing Brown

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. . . ~ Thomas Pynchon

Public money should be spent on art but through individuals not committees. ~ Antony Gormley

I work on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees to keep us safe at home and strong in the world. ~ Tim Kaine

Every new experience is unusual. The rest of life is just sleep and committee meetings. ~ John Twelve Hawks

A national legal organization is giving very serious thought to using The Betrayal of America as a legal basis for asking the House Judiciary Committee to institute impeachment proceedings against these five justices. ~ Vincent Bugliosi

The minute somebody joins a committee ... they immediately suffer from committee brain. They become wildly over-enthusiastic, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic. Committees turn people into idiots, and politics is a committee. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Of course we would all like to "believe" in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose our tiresome selves; like, perhaps, to transform the white flag of defeat at home into the brave white banner of battle away from home. And of course it is all right to do that; that is how, immemorially, thing have gotten done. But I think it is all right only so long as we do not delude ourselves about what we are doing, and why. It is all right only so long as we remember that all the ad hoc committees, all the picket lines, all the brave signatures in The New York Times, all the tools of agitprop straight across the spectrum, do not confer upon anyone any ipso facto virtue. It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with "morality." Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there. ~ Joan Didion

Living movements do not come of committees, nor are great ideas worked out through the post, even though it had been the penny post. ~ John Henry Newman

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. ~ Rory Bremner

I didn't serve on a committee that dealt with foreign policy. ~ Geraldine Ferraro

The idea that the Tony committee and the New York theater community as a whole have embraced 'Billy Elliot' is very, very exciting. ~ Eric Fellner

Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew - at least they claimed to be Communists - couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves. ~ John Steinbeck

The typical large company has a compensation committee, They don't look for Dobermans on that committee, they look for chihuahuas. ~ Warren Buffett

If you want to learn about the whole government and how it operates, the Appropriations Committee is the best place to learn it. ~ John J. Rooney

'The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS's targeting of conservative applicants,' the Oversight report states. 'Each of these leaders could have and should have done more to prevent the IRS's targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants.' ~ Patrick Howley

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… ~ David G. McAfee

The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy. ~ Ben Macintyre

Innovation is not born out out of a committee; innovation is a fight. It's messy, people die, but when the battle is over, something unimaginably significant has been achieved. ~ Rands

I have voted to make tough decisions in budgetary times, I've served on two recessionary budgets, my opponent has never served on any a budget committee where there was less money to spend than the year before. ~ Matt Gonzalez

There were nights when I left the sessions physically and emotionally drained after hearing the anguish pour out like blood from a gaping wound. Don't let anyone ever tell you different – psychotherapy is one of the most taxing endeavors known to mankind; I've done all sorts of work, from picking carrots in the scorching sun to sitting on national committees in paneled board rooms, and there's nothing that compares to confronting human misery hour after hour and bearing the responsibility for easing that misery using only one's mind and mouth. At its best it's tremendously uplifting as you watch the patient open up, breathe, let go of the pain. At its worst is like surfing in a cesspool struggling for balance while being slapped with wave after putrid wave. ~ Jonathan Kellerman

By the time we got to MGM, and Lions Gate the movie was done there was nothing else to say. It was done. Just as at Universal, it was art by committee. ~ Rob Zombie