Nature & Animals Quote by John Le Carre

Le Carre’s line lands like a dry office memo that suddenly grows teeth: a committee, that most bureaucratic of inventions, becomes an “animal” built to move backward. The joke isn’t just that groups are slow; it’s that their design is defensive. Four back legs implies a creature evolved for retreat, for resisting forward motion even when progress is the mandate. In one image, he reframes “deliberation” as institutionalized recoil.

The intent is less anti-collaboration than anti-accountability. Committees diffuse responsibility so efficiently that no one has to own a decision, and that safety feature is exactly what makes them politically attractive. Le Carre, who spent his career anatomizing systems that survive by concealment, is pointing at the same machinery: consensus as camouflage. When everyone agrees, no one can be blamed; when no one can be blamed, nothing truly changes.

The subtext has a Cold War tang. Le Carre’s espionage world is packed with meetings where language is polished to remove risk, and where strategy becomes a way of managing optics rather than reality. A committee isn’t merely indecisive; it’s a creature trained to preserve itself, to avoid the kind of decisive action that creates a clear trail. That’s why the metaphor works: it’s funny because it’s grotesquely accurate. The line flatters no one, least of all the speaker; it suggests even smart people, once absorbed into a collective, start walking backward on purpose.