Yes Minister (1980–1984)
Nigel Hawthorne: Sir Humphrey Appleby
Photos
Quotes
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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!
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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.
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Sir Humphrey Appleby : He who would keep a secret must keep it a secret that he hath a secret to keep.
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Sir Humphrey Appleby : It's always a victory of the heartless over the mindless.
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Sir Humphrey Appleby : If you're going to do this damn silly thing, don't do it in this damn silly way.
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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!
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Sir Humphrey Appleby : The Prime Minister Giveth, and the Prime Minister Taketh Away. Blessed be the Name of the Prime Minister...
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Sir Humphrey Appleby : He is our Breadwinner.
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Education Campaigner : Children should be taught the Facts of Life in Class, but not Homosexual Technique!
Sir Humphrey Appleby : Well, where should they learn that?
Education Campaigner : Behind the Bike Sheds, like I did!
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Sir Humphrey Appleby : Let him find it near the bottom of the pile.
