Anthony Sampson Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

Once you touch the trappings of monarchy, like opening an Egyptian tomb, the inside is liable to crumble.

Anthony Sampson
In America journalism is apt to be regarded as an extension of history: in Britain, as an extension of conversation.

Anthony Sampson
Muddle is the extra unknown personality in any committee.

Anthony Sampson
Of all the legacies of empire, the most dangerous is surely an immobile bureaucracy which can perpetuate its own interests and values, like those ancient hierarchies which presided over declining civilizations…As the British mandarins reinforce their defences, awarding each other old imperial honours, do they hear any echoes from Castile or Byzantium?

Anthony Sampson
Members [of civil service orders] rise from CMG (known sometimes in Whitehall as 'Call Me God') to the KCMG ('Kindly Call Me God') to—for a select few governors and super-ambassadors—the GCMG ('God Calls Me God').

Anthony Sampson
A secret tome of The Great and the Good is kept, listing everyone who has the right, safe qualifications of worthiness, soundness and discretion; and from this tome came the stage army of committee people.

Anthony Sampson
[Bankers] seem specially conscious of time, always aware that time is money. There is always a sense of restraint and tension. (Is it part of the connection which Freud observed between compulsive neatness, anal eroticism and interest in money?)

Anthony Sampson