Yes, Minister (UK) Quotes

Yes, Minister (UK)

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Yes, Minister (UK) Quotes

	Unknown Episode: Sir Humphrey Appleby: How would you feel about your present master as the next Prime Minister? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Are you in a hurry? Bernard Woolley: No, I was just checking my watch to see it wasn't April 1st!
	Unknown Episode: James Hacker: What will happen to him? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, I gather he was as drunk as a lord. So, after a discreet interval, they'll probably make him one.
	Unknown Episode: Sir Humphrey Appleby: How are things at the Campaign for the Freedom of Information, by the way? Sir Arnold Robinson: Sorry, I can't talk about that.
	Unknown Episode: Sir Humphrey Appleby: I think they refer to it as "horizontal jogging".
	Season 3 / Episode 6: - The Whiskey Priest Sir Humphrey Appleby: What's the matter, Bernard? Bernard Woolley: Oh nothing really, Sir Humphrey. Sir Humphrey Appleby: You look unhappy. Bernard Woolley: Well, I was just wondering if the minister was right, actually. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Very unlikely. What about? Bernard Woolley: About ends and means. I mean, will I end up as a moral vacuum too? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh, I hope so, Bernard. If you work hard enough. Bernard Woolley: I actually feel rather downcast. If it's our job to carry out government policies, shouldn't we believe in them? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Huh, what an extraordinary idea. Bernard Woolley: Why? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Bernard, I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I had believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would have been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel. And of denationalising it and renationalising it. On capital punishment, I'd have been a fervent retentionist and an ardent abolishionist. I would've been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, a grammar school preserver and destroyer, a nationalisation freak and a privatisation maniac; but above all, I would have been a stark, staring, raving schizophrenic.
	Season 3 / Episode 5: - The Bed Of Nails Sir Mark Spencer: [intending to dupe Hacker into taking a thankless job] But Sir Humphrey Appleby is bound to tell Hacker he'd be crazy to take it on. Sir Arnold Robinson: Yes. "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes", I can hear him say. "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts", roughly translated. Though Humphrey would have put it in English for Hacker's benefit. Hacker went to the LSE, you know. Sir Mark Spencer: So did I. Sir Arnold Robinson: Oh, I am sorry.
	Season 3 / Episode 4: - The Moral Dimension Sir Humphrey Appleby: Superb, Minister! Bernard Woolley: Thank you, Minister. James Hacker: Ah well, it was nothing. One must stick by one's friends, eh, Humphrey. And Bernard. Loyalty. Sir Humphrey Appleby, Bernard Woolley: Yes, Minister.
	Season 3 / Episode 4: - The Moral Dimension James Hacker: Will you answer a direct question? James Hacker: I strongly advise you not to ask a direct question. James Hacker: Why? Sir Humphrey Appleby: It might provoke a direct answer. James Hacker: Never has yet.
	Season 3 / Episode 3: - The Skeleton in the Closet Sir Humphrey Appleby: If local authorities don't send us the statistics that we ask for, then government figures will be a nonsense. James Hacker: Why? Sir Humphrey Appleby: They will be incomplete. James Hacker: But government figures are a nonsense anyway. Bernard Woolley: I think Sir Humphrey want to ensure they are a complete nonsense.
	Season 3 / Episode 3: - The Skeleton in the Closet James Hacker: Bernard, how did Sir Humphrey know I was with Dr. Cartwright? Bernard Woolley: God moves in a mysterious way. James Hacker: Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Humphrey is not God, OK? Bernard Woolley: Will you tell him or shall I?
	Season 3 / Episode 3: - The Skeleton in the Closet Bernard Woolley: Well it is understood if Ministers want to know anything it will be brought to their notice. If they go out looking for information they might... oh well, they might... James Hacker: ...find it?
	Season 3 / Episode 3: - The Skeleton in the Closet Sir Humphrey Appleby: The identity of the official whose alleged responsibility for this hypothetical oversight has been the subject of recent discussion is not shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led you to assume, but, not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question is, it may surprise you to learn, one whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun. James Hacker: I beg your pardon? Sir Humphrey Appleby: It was... I.
	Season 3 / Episode 3: - The Skeleton in the Closet Bernard Woolley: He's coming round now. James Hacker: Why, did he faint?
	Season 3 / Episode 3: - The Skeleton in the Closet James Hacker: How am I going to explain the missing documents to "The Mail"? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, this is what we normally do in circumstnces like these. James Hacker: [reads memo] This file contains the complete set of papers, except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967... James Hacker: Was 1967 a particularly bad winter? Sir Humphrey Appleby: No, a marvellous winter. We lost no end of embarrassing files. James Hacker: [reads] Some records which went astray in the move to London and others when the War Office was incorporated in the Ministry of Defence, and the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments. James Hacker: That's pretty comprehensive. How many does that normally leave for them to look at? James Hacker: How many does it actually leave? About a hundred?... Fifty?... Ten?... Five?... Four?... Three?... Two?... One?... Zero? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes, Minister.
	Season 3 / Episode 2: - The Challenge Sir Humphrey Appleby: [talking about nuclear fallout shelters] Well, you have the weapons, you must have the shelters. James Hacker: I sometimes wonder why we need the weapons. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Minister! You're not a unilateralist? James Hacker: I sometimes wonder, you know. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well then you must resign from the government! James Hacker: Ah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not that unilateralist! Anyway, the Americans will always protect us from the Russians, won't they? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Russians? Who's talking about the Russians? James Hacker: Well, the independent deterrent. Sir Humphrey Appleby: It's to protect us against the French!
	Season 3 / Episode 1: - Equal Opportunities James Hacker: That is the last interview I give for a school magazine; she asked some very difficult questions. Annie Hacker: Not difficult, just innocent. She was assuming there was some moral basis to your activities. James Hacker: Well, there is. Annie Hacker: Oh Jim, don't be silly.
	Season 3 / Episode 1: - Equal Opportunities Sir Humphrey Appleby: Minister, it takes time to do things 'now'. James Hacker: The three articles of civil service faith: it takes longer to do things quickly; it's more expensive to do them cheaply; it's more democratic to do them in secret.
	Season 3 / Episode 1: - Equal Opportunities Sir Humphrey Appleby: Minister. I have come to the conclusion that you were right. James Hacker: Are you being serious, Humphrey? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes indeed, Minister. I am fully-seized of your ideas and have taken them on board and I am now positively against discrimination against women and positively in favour of positive discrimination in their favour - discriminating discrimination of course.
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty 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 Appleby: 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. Isn't it?
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty Sir Humphrey Appleby: It occurred before certain important facts were known, and couldn't happen again. James Hacker: What important facts? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, that Hitler wanted to conquer Europe. James Hacker: I thought that everybody knew that. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Not the Foreign Office.
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty Sir Humphrey Appleby: We write him a speech that makes him nail his trousers to the mast. Bernard Woolley: Oh, you mean nail his colours to the mast. Sir Humphrey Appleby: No, nail his trousers to the mast. Then he can't climb down.
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty James Hacker: Why is it that Ministers can't ever go anywhere without their briefs? Bernard Woolley: It's in case they get caught with their trousers down.
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty Sir Humphrey Appleby: I sometimes think our minister doesn't believe that he exists unless he reads about himself in the papers. I'll bet you the first thing he says when he gets into the office is, "Any press reports on my Washington speech?" Bernard Woolley: How much do you bet? Sir Humphrey Appleby: A pound. Bernard Woolley: Done! He won't because he's already asked. In the car on the way back from Heathrow.
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty Sir Humphrey Appleby: We can't worry about entertaining people. We are not scriptwriters for a comedian. Well not a professional one, anyway.
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty James Hacker: You said yourself how important these select committees are. I cannot be seen to mislead them. Sir Humphrey Appleby: You will not be SEEN to mislead them.
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty James Hacker: The committee isn't the least bit interested in the nature of thruth. They're all MP's!
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty James Hacker: I'm made to look like I've wasted all the money that everybody else has been saving. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh, minister. Nobody else have been saving anything. You ought to know that by now!
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty Sir Humphrey Appleby: Government policy has nothing to do with common sense.
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty James Hacker: I have backed you up, Humphrey, in just the same way that you have always backed me up. Isn't that so? James Hacker: [to Sir Humphrey] Did you say something? Bernard Woolley: I think he said "Yes, minister".
	Season 2 / Episode 7: - A Question of Loyalty Sir Humphrey Appleby: A tiny mistake. The sort that anyone can make. James Hacker: A tiny mistake? 75,000 pounds? Give me an example of a big mistake. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Letting people find out about it.

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