Committee Quotes & Sayings

In this age, there is no substitute for Christianity. That was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants. The great, vital and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure, doctrines and divine truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. — United States House Judiciary Committee Of Congress 1854

The problem with the contemplative life was that there was no end to contemplation, no fixed time limit after which thought had to be transformed into action. Contemplation was like sitting on a committee that seldom made recommendations and was ignored when it did, a committee that lacked even the authority to disband. — Richard Russo

I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and I have not provided false information to this or any other committee. — Lois Lerner

Well look, it seems as though you do have some experience now at least of threefold bliss, luminosity, and emptiness that is such an important feature of the first yoga. On top of that, you are in an excellent position, having had introduction from myself and having all the things on your side that you have going for you. But look out! Your mind is probably not strong enough yet that you can go wandering into town, as a lot of yogi-types would, drinking liquor and womanizing, and trying to incorporate that into your practice. Instead, and until you have advanced far enough that you can actually take these things onto the path, you should be practicising!

- Gampopa to Phagmo Drupa

(Duff T. Gampopa Teaches Essence Mahamudra: Interviews with His Heart Disciples, Dusum Khyenpa and Others. Padma Karpo Translation Committee, 2012. Pp. xxviii-xxix) — Tony Duff

For the past three years, the Senate intelligence committee has avoided carrying out its oversight of our nation's intelligence programs whenever the White House becomes uncomfortable with the questions being asked. The very independence of this committee is called into question. — Jay Rockefeller

In 1975 I was among a group of blacks who formed the Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee. — David Dinkins

Persuasion comes in many forms," said Lord Vetinari. "No, I agree with Archchancellor Ridcully, sending Captain Carrot would be an excellent idea."
"What? Did I say something?" said Ridcully.
"Do you think that sending Captain Carrot would be an excellent idea?"
"What? Oh. Yes. Good lad. Keen. Got a sword."
"Then I agree with you," said Lord Vetinari, who knew how to work a committee. — Terry Pratchett

Our greatest privilege and responsibility as leaders of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs is to provide our veterans with a system that cares for their wounds and ensures that they have an opportunity to succeed. — Steve Buyer

Many of the earmark request forms are actually filled out by lobbyists and then just turned in by the member's staff to the appropriations committee. — Jeff Flake

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

Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder. — Christopher Hitchens

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 important problems (of course, not the unimportant, trivial problems, or problems whose solutions have already been decided after discussion at meetings and need only be carried out) must be submitted to the committee for discussion, — Mao Zedong

Churches for churched people obsess over the most frivolous, inconsequential things. It's why you dread your board meetings, your elder meetings, and your committee meetings. You rarely talk about anything important. You're managing found people. I know you care about un-found people in your heart. But do you care in your schedule, your programming, your preaching style, or your budget? — Andy Stanley

A laugh came from the cockpit and Thorne appeared in the doorway, strapping a gun holster around his waist. You're asking the cyborg fugitive and the wild animal to be the welcoming committee? That's adorable. — Marissa Meyer

Like a committee in a thieves' kitchen when someone has casually mentioned the law. — H.G.Wells

I was the enemy of the major studio. I believed in one man - one film. I believed one man should make the film. And I believed the director should be that one man. One man should do it - I didn't give a damn who. I just couldn't accept art as a committee. I could only accept art as an extension of an individual. — Frank Capra

I am NOT a committee. — Anonymous

As a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, I will be participating in several hearings on the startling revelations contained in the report. — Charles Bass

When you do a movie in the studio system, there's a committee. A committee of six or seven people you answer to. There's two or three producers, a studio executive and one or two people above that studio executive. — Thomas Lennon

Dick Clarke, who was head of counter-terrorism in the National Security Council, pushed constantly for the Principals Committee, which is the key national security group of top officials to take up the issue of terrorism. — Sidney Blumenthal

Orrin Hatch is old enough to be my father, and I don't want my father running the United States Senate Finance Committee. — Scott Howell

With Russia about to hold the Winter Games in Sochi, the country is open to pressure. American and world leaders must speak out against Mr. Putin's attacks and the violence they foster. The Olympic Committee must demand the retraction of these laws under threat of boycott. — Harvey Fierstein

To assess the intelligence of a committee, divide the IQ of its stupidest member by the number of members. — Robert A. Heinlein

he job and Career Information Services Committee of the Adult Lifelong Learning Section of the Public Library Division of the American Library Association prepared the first edition of the Guide to Basic Resume Writing. Contributing members of this committee at the time of the book's initial publication (and their affiliation — Public Library Association

This was the problem with making important decisions by committee and trying to run a war of ideals with men and women whose vision was so limited by money. — Jack Coughlin

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

So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn't because of Black Power, isn't because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it's not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities. — Stokely Carmichael

One of the ideas behind doing this acoustic record is that I didn't want to have to produce it by committee. — Robyn Hitchcock

It is the purpose of the majority of the Immigration Committee to encourage assimilation, yet this bill has already done more than anything I know of to bring about discord among our resident aliens. — Emanuel Celler

The Appropriations Committee in the Senate is out of control, out of control on spending. — John Ensign

It would be worth the while if in each town there were a committee appointed to see that the beauty of the town received no detriment. If we have the largest boulder in the county, then it should not belong to an individual, nor be made into door-steps. — Henry David Thoreau

No matter how carefully you plan it, there are times when you suddenly find yourself a committee of one, in charge of lifting the entire world with a lever. — Ivy Baker Priest

In the firm belief that the American public deserves a better explanation than that thus far given by the Air Force, I strongly recommend that there be a committee investigation of the UFO phenomena. I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs, and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment of the subject. — Gerald R. Ford

During elections for the 1776 convention to frame a constitution for Pennsylvania, a Privates Committee urged voters to oppose great and overgrown rich men ... they will be too apt to be framing distinctions in society. — Howard Zinn

I think George Allen from Virginia was a distinguished governor, he's a distinguished senator and head of the Senatorial Campaign Committee and won some significant victories. He is a very attractive guy and would make a tremendous president. — Pat Robertson

In the first moments, the members of the Presidium who were with me at the Secretariat were taken to the Party Central Committee under the control of Soviet forces. — Alexander Dubcek

I have found there are real objects under in intelligent control being seen on the ground and in our skies worldwire. The unknowns have varied over the decades from 22 percent in my own civilian files, 30 percent in the University of Colorda Condon Committee scientific studies, to at least 40 percent recently revised found in the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book military investigations. This is not acceptable, no matter who is doing the investigations. — George Fawcett

Any committee is only as good as the most knowledgeable, determined and vigorous person on it. There must be somebody who provides the flame. — Lady Bird Johnson

A camel is a horse designed by committee. — Alec Issigonis

Most writers cannot afford focus groups or A/B testing, but they can ask a roommate or colleague or family member to read what they wrote and comment on it. Your reviewers needn't even be a representative sample of your intended audience. Often it's enough that they are not you. This does not mean you should implement every last suggestion they offer. Each commentator has a curse of knowledge of his own, together with hobbyhorses, blind spots, and axes to grind, and the writer cannot pander to all of them. Many academic articles contain bewildering non sequiturs and digressions that the authors stuck in at the insistence of an anonymous reviewer who had the power to reject it from the journal if they didn't comply. Good prose is never written by a committee. A writer should revise in response to a comment when it comes from more than one reader or when it makes sense to the writer herself. — Steven Pinker

I was under the impression that werewolf packs were not meant to be run by committee."
"Yeah," I said. "But I dont want to be like all those other werewolves, you know?"
"Says the werewolf named Kitty."
"It's too late to change my name now," I grumbled. — Carrie Vaughn

The masculine heart needs a place where nothing is prefabricated, modular, nonfat, zip lock, franchised, on-line, microwavable. Where there are no deadlines, cell phones, or committee meetings. Where there is room for the soul. — John Eldredge

In the steel industry the corporations generally have accepted collective bargaining and negotiated wage agreements with the Committee for Industrial Organization. — John L. Lewis

You have to marry me. I think I've just been voted off the committee on international trade-they think I'm unstable. And Tony took me off his lift. Mary says she'll quit if I don't bring you back. Ericka found your earrings, and she gave them to Jim. He said to tell you that you can't have them unless you come back for them ... — Judith McNaught

A fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees ... which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one ... — Mary Parker Follett

The Open Market Committee, as presently established, is plainly not in the public interest. This committee must be operated by purely public servants, representatives of the people as a whole and not any single interest group. The Open Market Committee should be abolished, and its powers transferred to the Federal Reserve Board - the present public members of the committee, with reasonably short terms of office. — Wright Patman

The Mars Committee and its various offshoots have struggled consistently over the years on behalf of the public interest. Their work is presented with great documentary force in Dr. Stanley V McDaniel's 1993 book, The McDaniel Report, published by North Atlantic Books of Berkeley, California. This report should be required reading for anybody who cares about the future of public science. — Whitley Strieber

At the time when Pope Pius VII had to leave Rome, which had been conquered by revolutionary French, the committee of the Chamber of Commerce in London was considering the herring fishery. One member of the committee observed that, since the Pope had been forced to leave Rome, Italy was probably going to become a Protestant country. "Heaven help us," cried another member. "What," responded the first, "would you be upset to see the number of good Protestants increase?" "No," the other answered, "it isn't that, but suppose there are no more Catholics, what shall we do with our herring?" - Alexandre Dumas, Le grand dictionnaire de cuisine, 1873 — Mark Kurlansky

At no point did the [Burns] committee conclude, or even attempt to conclude, an assessment of cruelty. Yet many bodies have erroneously quoted the Burns report, stating that it clearly demonstrated that the practice of hunting wild animals with dogs caused cruelty. The report did not state that. — Lawson Soulsby, Baron Soulsby Of Swaffham Prior

If Sun were to hand the management of Java over to a committee of monkeys, would it be more successful? — Eric Sink

All I mean is that a board of directors is one or two ambitious men
and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings. They say we can't visualize a total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting. The point is only who chooses to fill that nothing. It's a tough battle. The toughest. It's simple enough to fight any enemy, so long as he's there to be fought. But when he isn't ... — Ayn Rand

Governments decide they know best and they're going to tell you what to do. The trouble is that education doesn't go on in the committee rooms of our legislative buildings. It happens in classrooms and schools, and the people who do it are the teachers and the students. And if you remove their discretion, it stops working. — Ken Robinson

The enormous power held by each of the southern committee chairmen individually was multiplied by their unity, by what White called a "oneness found nowhere else in politics." The symbol was the legendary "Southern Caucus," the meetings of the twenty-two southern senators which were held in the office of their leader, Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia, whenever crisis threatened - meetings that were, White said, "for all the world like reunions of a large and highly individualistic family whose members are nevertheless bound by one bond." In those meetings, the southern position was agreed upon, its tactics mapped, its front made solid. — Robert A. Caro

The five stages of bureaucratic grieving are: denial, anger, committee meetings, scapegoating, and cover-up. — Charles Stross

The American people will be appalled to learn the health care bill exempts (congressional) leadership and committee staff. — Tom Coburn

The past has given us much too many bad answers for us not to see that the mistakes were in the questions themselves. There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and the organization control; between the "come one, come all" of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put off and flogging the dead horse of how planting carrots is enough to leave this nightmare. — The Invisible Committee

What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary — Richard Harkness

We're not depressed; we're on strike. For those who refuse to manage themselves, "depression" is not a state but a passage, a bowing out, a sidestep towards a political disaffiliation. — The Invisible Committee

The Trojans lost the war because they fell for a really dumb trick. hey, there's a gigantic wooden horse outside and all the Greeks have left. Let's bring it inside! Not a formula for long-term survival. Now if they had formed a task force to study the Trojan Horse and report back to a committee, everyone wouldn't have been massacred.. Who says middle management is useless? — Adam C. Engst

In April, I asked my staff to determine if Senate rules and relevant laws would allow me to direct the trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock. In May, my staff worked with outside counsel and with the Senate ethics committee staff to draft a written communication to the trustees. After obtaining pre-approval by mid-June from the Senate ethics committee, I issued a letter directing my trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock in my family's trust. — Bill Frist

The report begins by asserting that it is a 'comprehensive' look at Benghazi resulting from an intensive investigation of nearly two years. Neither claim is true. Instead, the report is a reflection of a dysfunctional committee and the reluctant, ad hoc approach to Benghazi of its leadership and top staff. — Stephen F. Hayes

Sproul. These were discussed in a number of ways by groups of delegates from the Advisory Board and in various partial and plenary sessions at the summit. Furthermore, written comments were solicited and received in considerable numbers. A Draft Committee composed of Drs. Clowney, — R.C. Sproul

My continued incarceration has served some good purposes. My defense committee has served as a training ground for other organizers in their defense of freedom and justice. — Leonard Peltier

On the morning of June 20, at a hastily arranged conference at New York's Gramercy Park Hotel, a new umbrella organization was born with Eleanor as honorary chair - the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children. The purpose of the new committee was to coordinate all the different agencies and resources available in the United States for the care of refugee children. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Committee meetings are always held at inconvenient times and usually take place in dark, dusty rooms the temperatures of which are unsuited to the human body. — Virginia Graham

At a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to underline that this threat must be met through the broadest possible international cooperation. This principle finds its clearest expression today in the work of the IAEA and its director general. In the nuclear non-proliferation regime, it is the IAEA which ensures that nuclear energy is not misused for military purposes, and the director general has stood out as an unafraid advocate of new measures to strengthen that regime. — Mohamed ElBaradei

I was sent there by the Free Congress Committee, headed by Paul Weyrich. Fred Smith and I were sent down as observers, with reporters' credentials, so we could witness the events. — Dixie Lee Ray

SEN. McCARTHY: You will teach morality, ethics, and good house-keeping to these 48 states, and to the world. By order of this committee, June Cleaver, you will be a beacon! You will sire the future and teach it what we tell you to teach it! Echo effect, echo effect, echo effect ... — Benjamin R. Smith

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

My parents were very active in the Civil Rights Movement. My father was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) worker; my mother was a secretary with the Panthers. — Yaya DaCosta

To do so, we are creating a Fairness for Switzerland Committee that will not only disseminate some of the facts, but also protect a relationship that is important to all of us in North America. — Peter Munk

Over the years it [the National Committee for Mental Hygiene] has championed for the promotion of 'mental health' despite the fact that nobody knows what it is or how to do it. — E. Fuller Torrey

If you ever live in a country run by a committee, be on the committee. — William Graham Sumner

The International Committee to support People's War in India salutes all the initiatives held in different countries of the world for the International Days of action on 29-30-31 January 2015. We are carefully collecting all these small and wide actions. They are a sign of solidarity of proletarians and peoples with the fighting masses in India, marching to the liberation from imperialism, feudalism and comprador bourgeoisie, along the epic rebellion began in Naxalbari on 1967, which impetuously comes up to the present day. — Anonymous

My feeling has always been that 'Good Eats' would have never happened had it been left to a committee. — Alton Brown

That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability. What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals. But whereas the physically defective Bernard had suffered all his life from the consciousness of being separate, it was only quite recently that, grown aware of his mental excess, Helmholtz Watson had also become aware of his difference from the people who surrounded him. This Escalator-Squash champion, this indefatigable lover (it was said that he had had six hundred and forty different girls in under four years), this admirable committee man and best mixer had realized quite suddenly that sport, women, communal activities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at the bottom, he was interested in something else. But in what? In what? — Aldous Huxley

But the remarkable thing about the beetles was their sensitivity to all the grammar and directives and slogans and even unstated desires of the ant world, which they learned to manipulate. They first memorized the proper antenna-vibration and foreleg-tap which the ants themselves used to request food. The poor workers, busy going here and there and back again all day and never getting a chance to think, automatically assumed that these fearsome strangers had been authorized by the Central Committee since they knew the password, and so they regurgitated a drop or two of fruit juice on cue, much the same as when one is traveling across Europe or Asia on the train and a person in uniform requests one's passport, one's ticket, takes them away, and comes back, or else does not come back, having sold them; a badge and a superior manner can obtain anything in this world. — William T. Vollmann

It's a fact of life that how you dress affects how you are perceived and whether your contribution to a meeting is registered as worth listening to. It was most alarming the way people's attitudes changed when I started wearing my designer suits to committee meetings. Obviously, it's not just the clothes that count; you have got to have something worth saying. But it si true that some people's views are dismissed before they speak because others perceive them as just a secretary! — Stephanie Ellis

We have to see that the economy is not "in" crisis, the economy is itself the crisis. It's not that there's not enough work, it's that there is too much of it. — The Invisible Committee

Orgies are an early form of what will someday become sex by committee. — Mason Cooley

The committee has an obligation to give you a choice. The members have the obligation and the right to make that choice. — Bill Vaughan

I guess you heard about this; the U.S. Olympic Committee is coming under fire after it was revealed that the uniforms for Team USA to be worn in the opening ceremony were made in China. Turns out they were made by some of the same kids who could beat us in gymnastics. That's the worst part. — Jay Leno

May 29, the Central Committee of the Sections goes into "permanent session" - what a fine, crisis-ridden sound it has, that term! — Hilary Mantel

A committee should consist of three men, two of whom are absent. — Herbert Beerbohm Tree

To make good decisions, CEOs need the courage to seek out disagreement. Alfred Sloan, the longtime CEO and chairman of General Motors, once interrupted a committee meeting with a question: "Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here?" All the committee members nodded. "Then," Sloan said, "I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what this decision is about. — Chip Heath

In May, when a Senate committee took up the explosive issue of titles, Adams suggested that Washington be addressed as "His Highness, the President of the United States of America and Protector of their Liberties."34 Adams provided fodder for contemporary wags and was promptly dubbed "His Rotundity" or the "Duke of Braintree. — Ron Chernow

Charlie Rangel was writing laws on our taxes as chair of the Ways and Means Committee while somehow neglecting to pay his own. — Nancy Gibbs

Once you hit 40, being in a band - a committee voting constantly on what you're going to be doing next month - it's more of a challenge. And when you have a kid as well. — Dean Wareham

New York City gritty committee pity the fool that act shitty in the midst of the calm, the witty. — Pharoahe Monch

Few Americans realize it, but the United Nations is driving to take control over the Internet. You remember, the folks who want a worldwide income tax and who put Syria and Iran on their Human Rights Committee. — Arthur L. Herman

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

I realized a school doesn't need a School Committee or Trustees or Governors or lumber or approved textbooks. All a school needs is a mind that sends and minds that receive. I shall teach my own students how to teach themselves. My own school. No buildings. Break out of the classroom prison. All I need is SKY. The Universe can be my classroom - the great vast world of the Concord countryside. — Henry David Thoreau

When you have the Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee and the political director of the Romney campaign, and their two companies get $150 million at the end of the campaign for the 'fantastic' get-out-the-vote program ... some of this borders on RICO violations. — Patrick Caddell

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

I think the legacy was set because the way George Mitchell was the leader enabled Tom Daschle to be the leader he is. It carried on the spirit of integrity and of reform, of also working both with committee chairmen but bringing in the newer members to be able to have a voice and a say and participate in the deliberations, to always look at a modern way of doing it. — Barbara Mikulski

The White Protestant's ultimate sympathy must be with science, factology, and committee rather than with sex, birth, heat, flesh, creation, the sweet and the funky; they must vote, manipulate, control, and direct, these Protestants who are the center of power in our land, they must go for what they believe is reason when it is only the Square logic of the past. — Norman Mailer

What is this Charity, this clinking of money between strangers, and when did Charity cease to be a comforting and secret thing between one friend and another? Does Love make her voice heard through a committee, does Love employ an almoner to convey her message to her neighbor? ... The real Love knows her neighbor face to face, and laughs with him and weeps with him, and eats and drinks with him, so that at last, when his black day dawns, she may share with him, not what she can spare, but all that she has. — Stella Benson

It is a building designed by committee: all they have been able to agree on is that it should be rectangular, have windows, and not fall over. — Max Barry

As noted in 1964 by Robert P. "Bob" Moses, director of the Mississippi project of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): "It's not contradictory for a farmer to say he's nonviolent and also pledge to shoot a marauder's head off. — Charles E. Cobb