"A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours"
About this Quote
Berle’s line lands because it turns office-speak into a punchline with a built-in indictment: the very thing a committee is supposed to produce - progress - gets replaced by its paper trail. “Keeps minutes” sounds dutiful, even virtuous, until the second clause flips the ledger. Minutes are preserved; hours vanish. The joke is accounting as comedy: the organization can document every tiny motion while hemorrhaging the only resource that actually matters.
The intent isn’t just to dunk on bureaucracy; it’s to expose a comforting modern ritual. Committees let institutions feel responsible without taking responsibility. They distribute blame, dilute authority, and convert decisions into process. If nothing happens, no single person “failed” - the group simply “met.” Berle, a comic who lived on timing and immediacy, is needling the mismatch between human urgency and institutional drag. His craft depends on the audience’s instant recognition: we’ve all sat through meetings that produce immaculate notes and zero momentum.
There’s also a sly critique of how professionalism performs competence. Minute-taking is a visible output, something you can archive, forward, cite. “Loses hours” names the invisible cost that rarely shows up in the recap email. In mid-century America - Berle’s peak era, when corporate life and committee culture spread with postwar managerial confidence - the line reads like a vaudeville heckle aimed at the new priesthood of procedure. The sting is that it still fits: we’ve upgraded to Slack and Zoom, but the basic transaction remains the same - record everything, decide nothing.
The intent isn’t just to dunk on bureaucracy; it’s to expose a comforting modern ritual. Committees let institutions feel responsible without taking responsibility. They distribute blame, dilute authority, and convert decisions into process. If nothing happens, no single person “failed” - the group simply “met.” Berle, a comic who lived on timing and immediacy, is needling the mismatch between human urgency and institutional drag. His craft depends on the audience’s instant recognition: we’ve all sat through meetings that produce immaculate notes and zero momentum.
There’s also a sly critique of how professionalism performs competence. Minute-taking is a visible output, something you can archive, forward, cite. “Loses hours” names the invisible cost that rarely shows up in the recap email. In mid-century America - Berle’s peak era, when corporate life and committee culture spread with postwar managerial confidence - the line reads like a vaudeville heckle aimed at the new priesthood of procedure. The sting is that it still fits: we’ve upgraded to Slack and Zoom, but the basic transaction remains the same - record everything, decide nothing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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