Daily Inspiration Quote by Alan Patrick Herbert

Control dressed up as curiosity is still control. Alan Patrick Herbert’s line takes the fussy, managerial impulse of modern governance and compresses it into a single comic click: first the survey, then the clampdown. The joke lands because the opening clause sounds almost neighborly - “Let’s find out” suggests fact-finding, open-mindedness, maybe even reform. Then the second clause arrives like a trapdoor: the information was never meant to enlighten; it was meant to enable interference.

Herbert, a novelist and satirist who spent years skewering institutional pomposity (and who also served in Parliament), knew how bureaucracy justifies itself. The quote’s rhythm mimics the logic of officialdom: data collection presented as neutral, followed by regulation presented as inevitable. It’s a miniature indictment of the administrative state’s favorite magic trick: rename surveillance as “understanding,” then treat any discovered behavior as a problem to be solved.

The subtext is not simply anti-government; it’s anti-busybody. Herbert is mocking the moral certainty that often rides shotgun with “public interest” crusades - the belief that if people are doing something unapproved, the mere fact of its existence is an argument for prohibition. The line also anticipates the modern anxiety of being measured into obedience: once everything is legible, everything is governable.

What makes it endure is the economy of its cynicism. Herbert doesn’t argue policy; he exposes motive. The laugh comes with a wince, because the pattern is familiar: inquiry becomes inventory, inventory becomes permission, permission becomes control.