“What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.”

“Committee - a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours.”

“I am prepared to waive the privilege against self-incrimination and to tell you everything you wish to know about my views or actions if your committee will agree to refrain from asking me to name other people. If the committee is unwilling to give me this assurance, I will be forced to plead the privilege of the fifth amendment at the hearing.”

“We learn what something is not — and that is as important as a positive discovery to the man who is going to pick up from there. At least he knows what not to do.”

“The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.”

“Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?”

“The safest refuge when dealing with urgent, ticklish problems is sought in shirking responsibility, in gaining time by the formation of Committees, with the requisite Sub-Committees to tackle the problem. It is the well-known practice of Promise, Pause, Prepare, Postpone and end by letting things alone. But this cannot last for ever. Now the secret of these Committees is that they consist of a group of men, who individually can do nothing, but collectively can meet and decide that nothing can be done, whilst they know that the best Sub-Committees consist of three persons, two of whom are always absent!”

“It's not necessarily about what career you pick. It's about how you do what you do.”

“Deliver us from committees.”

“Don't tell me what's necessary, you presumptupus pup. What's necessary is whatever I wish to do, regardless of how unnecessary it might be.”