Bureaucracy, statistics, and political denial in quotation

The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations moves from Oliver Franks's image of the Pentagon as a monument to the desk to Sam Goldwyn's paradoxical instruction to copy obsolete files before discarding them. The first mocks bureaucratic scale, while the second captures how recordkeeping can defeat an attempt to reduce paperwork. The familiar line about 'lies, damned lies, and statistics' is presented as an attribution to Benjamin Disraeli in Mark Twain's autobiography, so the source trail is indirect rather than a direct Disraeli text. A 1963 report then places Mandy Rice-Davies's terse reply against Lord Astor's denial of allegations about himself and parties at Cliveden. Together the examples show why a quotation dictionary is most useful when the words remain attached to their speaker, publication, and political setting.