“The stupidity surplus,” repeated Landen as he sat down at the kitchen table, “I’m all for responsible… — Jasper Fforde
“The stupidity surplus,” repeated Landen as he sat down at the kitchen table, “I’m all for responsible government, but storing it up like this is bound to cause problems sooner or later—even by acting sensibly, the government has shown itself to be a bunch of idiots.”
“There are a lot of idiots in this country,” I replied absently, “and they deserve representation as much as the next man.”
p. 2Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
Friday nodded and took a deep breath. “Has anyone noticed how short attention spans seem to have cast a certain latitude across the nation?”
“Do I ever,” I replied, rolling my eyes and thinking of the endlessly downward clicking of the Read-O-Meter. “No one’s reading books anymore. They seem to prefer the mind numbing spectacle of easily digested trash TV and celebrity tittle-tattle.”
“Exactly,” said Friday. “The long view has been eroded. We can’t see beyond six months, if that, and short-termism will spell our end.”
p. 264
The Commonsense Party’s first major policy reversal of perceived current wisdom was with the scrapping of performance targets, league standings and the attempt to make subtle human problems into figures on a graph that could be solved quickly and easily through “initiatives.” Arguing that important bodies such as the Health Service should have the emphasis on care and not on administration, the Commonsense party forced through legislation that essentially argued, “If it takes us ten years to get into the shit, it will take us twenty years to get out—and that journey starts now.”
p. 268
“The ChronoGuard has shut itself down, and time travel is as it should be: technically, logically and theoretically…impossible.”
“Good thing, too,” replied Landen. “It always made my head ache. In fact I was thinking of doing a self-help book for SF novelists eager to write about time travel. It would consist of a single word: Don’t.”
p. 350
