There are very many to choose from, but I reckon it's:
HACKER: "You mean to seriously tell me that winking at corruption is government policy?"
SIR HUMPHREY: "No, no Minister! It could never be government policy, that is unthinkable! Only government practice."
Incidentally, for my money, the best from Yes Prime Minister is where Humphrey has been cleared of being a Soviet spy, and Hacker addresses him:
HACKER: "Ah! Goofey... er, Humphrey!"
I can't say if it's the best quote of the whole series because I haven't seen all the episodes but I can say that it made me laugh hard when I first saw it:
Humphrey: Bernard, Ministers should never know more than they need to know. Then they can't tell anyone. Like secret agents, they could be captured and tortured.
Bernard: You mean by terrorists?
Humphrey: By the BBC, Bernard.
If you spoke your mind you might feel more connected
Until you stand politically corrected
one of the ones that stuck with me (although it's not verbatim):
Jim: When the country is going downhill - you need someone to jump up, get in the drivers seat - and step on the gas!
Bernard: You mean brake?
A chat with you and somehow, death loses its sting.....
Slippery trade union leader Joe Morgan finds out some dirt on a government projectr failure and tries cut a deal for his members to get a 20 per cent rise in allowances-
“Tell you what Hacker I’ll tell everyone I put in for 30 and you ground me down”
The series contains many brilliant exchanges of dialogue, but one of my favorites (and so far unmentioned) is from "A Question Of Loyalty."
SIR HUMPHREY: There's the excuse we used for the Munich Agreement: it occurred before certain important facts were known and couldn't happen again.
HACKER: What important facts?
SIR HUMPHREY: Well, that Hitler wanted to conquer Europe.
HACKER: I thought everybody knew that.
SIR HUMPHREY: Not the Foreign Office.
Speaking of the Foreign Office, here's another great quip about it from A Victory For Democracy:
Bernard: May I just clarify the question? You are asking who would know what it is that I don’t know and you don’t know but the Foreign Office know that they know that they are keeping from you so that you don’t know and they do know and, all we know, there is something we don’t know and we want to know. We don’t know what because we don’t know. Is that it?
Hacker: May I clarify the question? Who knows Foreign Office secrets, apart from the Foreign Office?
Bernard: Oh, that’s easy. Only the Kremlin.
I fight for the users! -- TRON
I'd have to go with this quote from Sir Humphrey in (I think) The Compassionate Society.
When talking about Hacker's grasp of industrial relations:
"The Minister doesn't know his ACAS from his NALGO."
Brilliant!
I love many of the others but I don't think anyone's mentioned this one from Whiskey Priest when the source comes to tell him about the weapons and insists he's not telling the Minister Hacker but rather James Hacker, former Editor.
James Hacker: Fine, well I'm not wearing my ministerial hat tonight but I think I ought to warn you; that if I need to be told what you tell me, I shant hesitate to do my duty and keep myself fully informed!
From The Right to know:
(a committee member says to Hacker)
"Men are animals too, you know!"
Hacker: "I know that, I've just come from the House of Commons!!"
Cute and cuddly boyz!!
And I just found perhaps the absolute best one. In A Question Of Loyalty, sir Humphrey is asked, during a committee hearing, something about common sense and replies:
"Government policy has nothing to do with common sense!!"
Now tell me if THIS is not true the world over!!
Cute and cuddly boyz!!
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Here's one I wrote down years ago. Not sure which episode, but the minister is trying to determine who is responsible for a foul up. Trying not to clearly say who screwed up, Humphrey Applebee, says: "The identity of the official whose alleged responsibility for this oversight, who has been the subject of recent discussion is NOT shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led you to assume.
“But not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question is, it may surprise you to learn, one whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun."
Minister asks "I beg your pardon?"
Humphrey admits, "It was I.
Just the two words "perpendicular pronoun" crack me up.
The episode was Skeleton in the Cupboard from the third season. The whole episode was great but that quote was the high point.
shareIn light of last June's Brexit vote, this Sir Humphrey speech is quite poignant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE
Too many to choose from, but I'd go with another from The Skeleton In The Cupboard, a follow-up to the one above, Sir Humphrey explaining how he made such a huge legal screw-up:
"Obviously, I'm not a trained lawyer. Or I wouldn't be in charge of the legal department."
Anything Sir Humphrey says is quotable, really.
Never be complete.
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I remember reading somewhere long ago that he often surprised the cast and crew by saying all his long tirades perfectly straight and correct, very rarely requiring a second take. A habit from the theatre, I guess.
They did have great chemistry indeed, all three of them. Derek Fowlds said the three of them had become close friends during the show, which certainly reflects in some scenes. It gives an air of warmth to a show that deals with some of the coldest people.
Never be complete.
There are two for me:
Sir Humphrey Appleby:
"Prime Minister, I must protest in the strongest possible terms my profound opposition to a newly instituted practice which imposes severe and intolerable restrictions upon the ingress and egress of senior members of the hierarchy and which will, in all probability, should the current deplorable innovation be perpetuated, precipitate a constriction of the channels of communication, and culminate in a condition of organisational atrophy and administrative paralysis which will render effectively impossible the coherent and co-ordinated discharge of the function of government within Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland!"
Jim Hacker:
"You mean you've lost your key?"
and
Bernard Woolley:
"Well, he's very keen on it."
Sir Humphrey:
"What's that got to do with it? Things don't happen just because Prime Ministers are very keen on them! Neville Chamberlain was very keen on peace!"
There are so many funny lines in these shows, but here's some of my favorites:
If people don't know what you're doing, then they don't know what you're doing wrong. - YM ("Open Government")
If the tubes were long enough, the consultant could stand in one place and listen to all the chests on the ward! - YM ("The Compassionate Society")
If you mean Britain, that is perfectly true, but if you mean you and me, then we need a transport policy like we need a hole in the cranial cavity! - YM ("The Bed Of Nails")