“Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.”

— Charles Dickens, book Little Dorrit

Bk. I, Ch. 10
Little Dorrit (1855-1857)
Variant: Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art o…" by Charles Dickens?

Charles Dickens116

English writer and social critic and a Journalist 1812–1870

Related quotes

“The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office.”

Charles Dickens book Little Dorrit

Bk. I, Ch. 10
Little Dorrit (1855-1857)

“Secondly, get rid of all dependence upon the central department. If you do not as yet perceive that public money can not wisely, in any shape, be taken for education, still refuse the grant that the central department offers as a bribe for the acceptance of its mischievous interference. Until individual self-reliance has grown among us, let each town administer education in its own way.”

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

State Education: A Help or Hindrance?

“This is…how artists should be—we should be creators and also teach the public how to be creators, how to make art, so that we may all use that art together.”

Augusto Boal (1931–2009) Brazilian writer

Games for Actors and non-Actors (1992)
Context: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a dance piece where the dancers danced in the first act and in the second showed the audience how to dance? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a musical where in the first act the actors sang and in the second we all sang together?... This is... how artists should be—we should be creators and also teach the public how to be creators, how to make art, so that we may all use that art together.

“Opportunity marries with circumstance and is midwife to the resultant bartering of public office. The mutuality is advantage to the parties involved merely facilitates the spread of such practices. When it reaches the point of being commonplace and is pragmatically perceived as the most practical means of getting things done, it has become systemic and difficult to eradicate.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Opening remarks to Transparency International Pacific Regional Meeting, 13 April 2005.

“Whatever is right can be achieved through the irresistible power of awakened and informed public opinion. Our object, therefore, is not to enquire whether a thing can be done, but whether it ought to be done, to so exert the forces of publicity that public opinion will compel it be done.”

William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) American newspaper publisher

Advertisement, N.Y. Herald Tribune (August 19, 1946)

“How can you expect a beholder to experience my picture as I experienced it? A picture comes to me a long time beforehand; who knows how long a time beforehand, I sensed, saw, and painted it and yet the next day even I do not understand what I have done. How can anyone penetrate my dreams, my instincts, my desires, my thought, which have taken a long time to fashion themselves and come to the surface, above all to grasp what I put there, perhaps involuntary.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Richard Friedenthal, (1963, p. 260).
1930s, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35

“In the end what matters is not how good we are but how good God is. Not how much we love Him but how much He loves us. And God loves us whoever we are, whatever we’ve done or failed to do, whatever we believe or can’t.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

“There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President shall take the oath of office in the presence of the people, but there is so manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to office of the chief executive officer of the nation that from the beginning of the Government the people, to whose service the official oath consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the solemn ceremonial.”

Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901) American politician, 23rd President of the United States (in office from 1889 to 1893)

Inaugural address (1889)
Context: There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President shall take the oath of office in the presence of the people, but there is so manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to office of the chief executive officer of the nation that from the beginning of the Government the people, to whose service the official oath consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the solemn ceremonial. The oath taken in the presence of the people becomes a mutual covenant. The officer covenants to serve the whole body of the people by a faithful execution of the laws, so that they may be the unfailing defense and security of those who respect and observe them, and that neither wealth, station, nor the power of combinations shall be able to evade their just penalties or to wrest them from a beneficent public purpose to serve the ends of cruelty or selfishness.

“If you like the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they're run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.”

Arthur Laffer (1940) American economist

CNN Newsroom http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200908040014, (August 4, 2009)

“An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Remarks in the U.S. House of Representatives in an effort to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (15 April 1970); recorded in the Congressional Record, vol. 116, p. 11913 and http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Senate_Impeachment_Role.htm. <br class="br">1970s

“Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Charles Dickens116

Related quotes

Related topics