Yes Minister (1980–1984)
Quotes
Bernard Woolley: That's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I give confidential security briefings. You leak. He has been charged under section 2a of the Official Secrets Act.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: [Talking about Government reports] it could be argued that the Sermon on the Mount, were it a government report, would never have been published.
[pauses]
Sir Humphrey Appleby: All that nonsense about the meek inheriting the Earth.
[pauses]
Sir Humphrey Appleby: It could do irreparable damage to the defence budget!
Sir Humphrey Appleby: It's always a victory of the heartless over the mindless.
Hacker: They have the right to know!
Sir Humphrey Appleby: No, they have the right to be ignorant. Knowledge implies complicity, ignorance has a certain Dignity.
Bernard Woolley: It makes me feel rather downcast. If it's our job to implement Government Policies, shouldn't we believe in them?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: What an extraordinary thing to say.
Bernard Woolley: Why?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Bernard, I have served 11 Governments in the last 30 years, if I believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately commited to keeping out of the Common Market and passionately committed to going into it, I would've been utterly convinced of the rightness of Nationalising Steel, and of denationalising it, and renationalising it. On Capital Punishment I would have been a fervent retentionist and an ardent Abolitionist, I would have been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, a Grammar School Destroyer and Preserver, a Nationalisation Freak and a Privatisation Maniac, but above all, I would have been a stark, staring, raving Schizophrenic!
Banker: I don't read the Financial Times, it's just part of the uniform.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: If you're going to do this damn silly thing, don't do it in this damn silly way.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: He who would keep a secret must keep it a secret that he hath a secret to keep.
Bernard Woolley: Where's W?
Bernard Woolley: We knew that there would be a Minister, Minister.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: The Prime Minister Giveth, and the Prime Minister Taketh Away. Blessed be the Name of the Prime Minister...
Sir Humphrey Appleby: He is our Breadwinner.
