Quotes about committees-and-meetings

A conference is a gathering of people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.

— Fred A. Allen

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

— Milton Berle

A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours.

— Milton Berle

A technical objection is the first refuge of a scoundrel.

— Heywood Broun

A committee is an animal with four back legs.

— John Le Carre

I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.

— Barnett Cock

We always carry out by committee anything in which any one of us alone would be too reasonable to persist.

— Frank Moore Colby

The real process of making decisions, of gathering support, of developing opinions, happens before the meeting or after.

— Terrence Deal

Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better.

— Peter F. Drucker

Committee: A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit to do the unnecessary.

— Richard Harkness

A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour.

— Elbert Hubbard

One of the reasons why the Ten Commandments are so short and to the point is the fact they were given direct and did not come out of committees.

— H. G. Hutcheson

A collection of a hundred Great brains makes one big fathead.

— Carl Jung

The heaping together of paintings by Old Masters in museums is a catastrophe; likewise, a collection of a hundred Great Brains makes one big fathead.

— Carl Jung

The ideal committee is one with me as the chairman, and two other members in bed with the flu.

— Lord Milverton

A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.

— C. Northcote Parkinson

The State, that craving rookery of committees and subcommittees.

— V. S. Pritchett

A committee of one gets things done.

— Joe Ryan

Muddle is the extra unknown personality in any committee.

— Anthony Sampson

When committees gather, each member is necessarily an actor, uncontrollably acting out the part of himself, reading the lines that identify him, asserting his identity. We are designed, coded, it seems, to place the highest priority on being individuals, and we must do this first, at whatever cost, even if it means disability for the group.

— Lewis Thomas

A committee is a group of the unwilling chosen form the unfit, to do the unnecessary.

— Source Unknown

A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but who, as a group, can meet and decide that nothing can be done.

— Source Unknown

A committee is a body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.

— Source Unknown

A camel looks like a horse that was planned by a committee.

— Source Unknown

dump a good idea on a meeting table. It will belong to the meeting.

— Source Unknown

Any committee that is the slightest use is composed of people who are too busy to want to sit on it for a second longer than they have to.

— Katharine Whitehorn