A conference is a gathering of important people who, singly, can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
Fred Allen (1894-1956) American humorist [b. John Florence Sullivan]
Letter to William McChesney Martin (25 Jan 1940)
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The letter, to the then-President of the New York Stock Exchange, was written as an apology for a joke Allen had made about Wall Street, and was re-published in TIME magazine (4 Feb 1940).
Allen apparently used the line, and variations of it, at various times in his career. A variant more commonly quoted than the original shows up, without citation, in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations:Committee -- A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.
Quotations about:
conference
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Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
COLE: We were supposed to draw a picture. Anything we wanted. I drew a man. He got hurt in the neck by another man with a screwdriver.
MALCOLM: You saw that on TV, Cole?
COLE: Everyone got upset. They had a meeting. Mom started crying. I don’t draw like that anymore.
MALCOLM: How do you draw now?
COLE: I draw — people smiling, dogs running, rainbows. They don’t have meetings about rainbows.
M. Night Shyamalan (b. 1970) Indian-American screenwriter, director
The Sixth Sense (1999)
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(Source (Video); dialog confirmed)