Sir Humphrey Appleby quotes from Yes, Prime Minister

Sir Humphrey

Open government, Prime Minister. Freedom of information. We should always tell the press freely and frankly anything that they could easily find out some other way.

Sir Humphrey

Real reductions in the size of the Service?! It'd be the end of civilisation as we know it!

Sir Humphrey

Bishops tend to have long lives. Apparently the Lord isn't all that keen to let them join him.

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.

Sir Humphrey

Gratitude is merely a lively expectation of favours to come.

Hacker

Wouldn't anybody... argue with me?

Serving officers obey orders without question!

Hacker

What if I were to get drunk?

Sir Humphrey

On the whole, it would be safer if you didn't.

Sir Humphrey

With Trident we could obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe.

Hacker

I don't want to obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe.

Sir Humphrey

But it's a deterrent.

Hacker

It's a bluff. I probably wouldn't use it.

Sir Humphrey

Yes, but they don't know that you probably wouldn't.

Hacker

They probably do.

Sir Humphrey

Yes, they probably know that you probably wouldn't. But they can't certainly know.

Hacker

They probably certainly know that I probably wouldn't.

Sir Humphrey

Yes, but even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn't, they don't certainly know that although you probably wouldn't, there is no probability that you certainly would!

Sir Humphrey

If you walked into a nuclear missile showroom, you would buy Trident. It's lovely, it's elegant, it's beautiful – it's quite simply the best, and Britain should have the best. In the world of the nuclear missile, it is the Savile Row suit, the Rolls-Royce Corniche, the Château Lafite 1945. It is the nuclear missile Harrods would sell you. What more can I say?

Hacker

Only that it costs fifteen billion pounds and we don't need it.

Sir Humphrey

Well, you could say that about anything at Harrods!

Bernard

But he's the Prime Minister!

Sir Humphrey

Indeed he is, Bernard. He has his own car, a nice house in London, a place in the country, endless publicity and a pension for life. What more does he want?

Bernard

I think he wants to govern Britain.

Sir Humphrey

Well, stop him, Bernard.

Sir Humphrey

Bernard, what is the purpose of our defence policy?

Bernard

To defend Britain.

Sir Humphrey

No, Bernard. It is to make people believe Britain is defended.

Bernard

The Russians?

Sir Humphrey

Not the Russians, the British! The Russians know it's not.

Hacker

The statistics are irrefutable...

Sir Humphrey

Statistics? You can prove anything with statistics.

Hacker

Even the truth.

Sir Humphrey

Yes... No!

Sir Humphrey

Notwithstanding the fact that your proposal could conceivably encompass certain concomitant benefits of a marginal and peripheral relevance, there is a countervailing consideration of infinitely superior magnitude involving your personal complicity and corroborative malfeasance, with a consequence that the taint and stigma of your former associations and diversions could irredeemably and irretrievably invalidate your position and culminate in public revelations and recriminations of a profoundly embarrassing and ultimately indefensible character.

Hacker

Perhaps I can have a précis of that?

People can wait in the lobby or in the state rooms.

Sir Humphrey

Some people, but some people must wait where other people cannot see the people who are waiting; and people who arrive before other people must wait where they cannot see the people who arrive after them being admitted before them; and people who come in from outside must wait where they cannot see the people from inside coming in to tell you what the people from outside have come to see you about; and people who arrive when you are with people they are not supposed to know you have seen must wait somewhere until the people who are not supposed to have seen you have seen you.

Bernard

Well, I believe it's the Prime Minister's decision who comes into his house. After all, I don't give my mother-in-law the key to my house.

Sir Humphrey

[furiously] I am not the Prime Minister's mother-in-law, Bernard!

Sir Humphrey

Prime Minister, I must protest in the strongest possible terms my profound opposition to the newly instituted practice which imposes severe and intolerable restrictions upon the ingress and egress of senior members of the hierarchy and will, in all probability, should the current deplorable innovation be perpetuated, precipitate a constriction of the channels of communication, and culminate in a condition of organisational atrophy and administrative paralysis, which will render effectively impossible the coherent and co-ordinated discharge of the function of government within Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland!

Hacker

You mean you've lost your key?