深色模式
Yes Minister — Season 1
Jim Hacker: "The opposition aren’t the opposition."
Sir Humphrey: "If there had been investigations, which there haven’t, or not necessarily, or I’m not at liberty to say whether there have, there would have been a project team which, had it existed, on which I cannot comment, which would now have disbanded, if it had existed, and the members returned to their original departments, if indeed there had been any such members."
Jim Hacker: "How do you defeat them [the Civil Service]? How do you make them do something they don’t want to do?"
Jim Hacker: "Look Tom, you were in office for years. You know all Civil Service tricks."
Sir Humphrey: "It must be hard for a political adviser to understand this, but I’m merely a civil servant. I simply do as I am instructed by my master."
Sir Humphrey: "Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now when it's worked so well?"
Jim Hacker: "So when this next comes up at Question Time, you want me to tell Parliament that it's their fault that the Civil Service is too big?"
Jumbo: "We should never let Ministers get so deeply involved. Once they start writing the draft, the next thing we know they'll be dictating policy."
Jim Hacker: "Where will I go?"
Jim Hacker: "When you give your evidence to the Think Tank, are you going to support my view that the Civil Service is over manned and feather-bedded, or not? Yes or no? Straight answer."
Jim Hacker: "Humphrey, do you see it as part of your job to help Ministers make fools of themselves?"
Sir Humphrey: "Minister, I have something to say to you which you may not like to hear."
Lucy Hacker: "It's because the badgers haven't got votes, isn't it?"
Ecological activist: "There is nothing special about man, Mr. Hacker. We're not above nature. We're all part of it. Man are animals too, you know."
Sir Humphrey: "Make sure he [Jim Hacker] spends more time where he can't get under our feet and can't do any damage."
Sir Desmond: "So it all boils down to the Industry Co-partnership Committee. Still, I find that quite acceptable."
Sir Humphrey: "It takes two to quango, Minister."
Bernard: "But can a 74 million pound building project on a nine acre site in the middle of a city be swept under the carpet?"
Jim Hacker: "Humphrey, is everything all right about the Solihull-project?"
Sir Humphrey: "Bernard, Ministers should never know more than they need to know. Then they can't tell anyone. Like secret agents, they could be captured and tortured."