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.
S2 E1Man Overboard
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.
S2 E2Official Secrets
[Lunch with a newspaper editor]
So I want you to retract that suppression story.
I don't see how I can.
Well, of course you can! You're the editor, aren't you?
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!
Gratitude is merely a lively expectation of favours to come.
Reference to François de La Rochefoucauld
The problem is, the prime minister *did* try to suppress the chapter, didn't he.
I don't know, did he?
Well, didn't he? Don't you remember?
What I remember is irrelevant, Bernard. If the minutes don't say that he did, then he didn't.
So you want me to falsify the minutes?
I want nothing of the sort! It's up to you, Bernard - what do you want?
I want to have a clear conscience.
A clear conscience.
Yes!
When did you acquire this taste for luxuries? Consciences are for politicians, Bernard! We are humble functionaries whose duty it is to implement the commands of our democratically elected representatives. How could we possibly be doing anything wrong if it has been commanded by those who represent the people?
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.
But if it's not a true record...
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.
S2 E3A Diplomatic Incident
Don't we ever get our own way with the French?
Well, sometimes.
When was the last time?
Battle of Waterloo, 1815.
[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.
[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.
S2 E4A Conflict of Interest
The only way to understand the Press is to remember that they pander to their readers' prejudices.
Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; The Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Oh and Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Sun readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's got big tits.
S2 E5Power to the People
Bernard, if the right people don’t have power, do you know what happens? The wrong people get it: politicians, councillors, ordinary voters!
But aren’t they supposed to, in a democracy?
This is a British democracy, Bernard!
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.
What the hell are you talking about?
We did a deal.
It's the old logical fallacy: "all cats have fours legs, my dog has four legs...
...therefore my dog is a cat."
He's suffering from politician's logic.
"Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it."
But doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing.
Doing anything is worse than doing nothing.
S2 E6The Patron of the Arts
If there was a major crisis, you wouldn't need to go at all.
Is there a major crisis coming up?
Not really, Prime Minister.
Is there a distant crisis, that we could bring forward?
I know, what about the death of a cabinet colleague?
Ooh, is one imminent?
Well we can hardly hope for that to fall on the right day. Well, not by accident.
Sir Humphrey, I need help.
You do. You do?
I've got to make a speech. It could be very embarrassing.
Oh Prime Minister, your speeches are nothing like as embarrassing as they used to be!
I didn't say the speech would be embarrassing, Sir Humphrey. I said the occasion could be.
Ah, yes, yes, indeed. Why?
It's to be to a hostile audience of posturing, self-righteous, theatrical drunks.
The House of Commons, you mean?
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!
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Yes, Prime Minister pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.