Nature & Animals Quote by Allan Sherman

Committees don’t just dilute ideas; they launder them. Allan Sherman frames bureaucratic decision-making as a kind of creative crime scene: everyone arrives with a bright “color,” but the process doesn’t blend them into something richer, it grinds them down into gray. That’s the joke, and it lands because it’s a lived experience disguised as a rhyme.

Sherman, a musician and satirist of mid-century American life, understood how institutions sell compromise as maturity. The subtext is that “collaboration” often becomes a polite mechanism for fear: fear of standing out, fear of being blamed, fear of choosing. When every voice must be accommodated, the safest outcome is the one that excites no one. Gray isn’t neutrality; it’s risk management.

The camel-as-committee-designed-horse line is a classic for a reason. It’s not just a dunk on groupthink, it’s a metaphor for mission creep: the horse starts as a clear, elegant purpose, then gets loaded with “helpful” features until it’s optimized for nothing in particular. A camel is impressive, but it’s impressive in a different job. That mismatch is the sting. Committees can produce something functional, even resilient, but rarely what anyone actually asked for.

Sherman’s intent isn’t to argue against cooperation; it’s to puncture the myth that process equals progress. The wit lets him criticize authority without sounding sanctimonious, turning organizational dysfunction into a singable, quotable truth.