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Cruel comments for the cynically-minded

2/22/2008

4 Comments

 
Posted by Jon
I love collecting quotes – especially really cynical comments! Here are a few that might provoke a rueful smile for those involved in proposal development:​
“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas. (Was he writing about some procurement teams?)

“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” – Abraham Lincoln. (He’d obviously just read the draft text from a subject matter expert!)

“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright. (No, surely not a comment on some account managers!)

“He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.” – Samuel Johnson. (Yep, I’ve worked on proposals with more than a few folks who’d fit that bill).

“He had delusions of adequacy.” – Walter Kerr. (Where do we even start?)
And my personal recent favourite?
​“If all the experts tell you to go right, and you decide to go left, you’re probably stupid. But if you get lucky, and discover a pot of gold along the stupid path, people will call you a leader. You’ll still be stupid, but fewer people will feel the need to point that out.” – Scott Adams
4 Comments
Alan Cheghall
3/26/2016 04:20:40 am

Jon – it may not have been his intention but Oscar Wilde summed up the life of a proposal writer when he said:

“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”

Although from personal experience I find it all the more exasperating when I need to put back commas that others have taken out!

Wilde also had a view on our transatlantic cousins:

“America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.”

Any comment BJ?

Reply
Jon
3/26/2016 04:20:52 am

Hi, Alan. If you find a way to hush BJ up, can you let me know? :-)

Coincidentally, this afternon the BBC news website has published its list of the top comedy put-downs ever. My favourite comes from Red Dwarf, and ties in to the “hushing up” theme:

“Look, we all have something to bring to this discussion. But I think from now on the thing you should bring is silence.”

Anyone ever felt like saying that to a proposal team member?!

Reply
BJ Lownie
3/26/2016 04:21:04 am

I’m speechless.

Reply
BJ Lownie
3/26/2016 04:21:17 am

Just kidding, of course.

I think it was proposals Groucho Marx was referring to when he said, “From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.”

As to discoveries of America prior to Columbus and those being hushed up, I suspect it probably was more a case of sheer awe of the place by the good folks from the other side of the pond*

*Of which all of my grandparents were members (Scottish and England) by the way.

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