Useful quotation

[kengr]

(swiped from a writer's list I'm on)

From a review of a book about the Vatican:

For example, one official offered a careerist's recipe for survival in the Roman curia: "Don't think. If you think, don't speak. If you speak, don't write. If you think and if you speak, don't write. If you think and speak and write, don't sign your name. If you think and speak and write and sign your name, don't be surprised."

If you're not writing about the Vatican, you can use the same quotation to describe the Bush administration or most other bureaucracies.