“
I died. I died and someone made a clerical error and I am in Heaven.
”
”
Jim Butcher (Summer Knight (The Dresden Files, #4))
“
The life I should be living had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.
”
”
Lev Grossman (The Magicians (The Magicians, #1))
“
All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy. This couldn't be it. It had been diverted elsewhere, to somebody else, and he'd been issued this shitty substitute faux life instead
”
”
Lev Grossman (The Magicians (The Magicians, #1))
“
Medicine, and Law, and Philosophy -
You've worked your way through every school,
Even, God help you, Theology,
And sweated at it like a fool.
Why labour at it any more?
You're no wiser now than you were before.
You're Master of Arts, and Doctor too,
And for ten years all you've been able to do
Is lead your students a fearful dance
Through a maze of error and ignorance.
And all this misery goes to show
There's nothing we can ever know.
Oh yes you're brighter than all those relics,
Professors and Doctors, scribblers and clerics,
No doubts or scruples to trouble you,
Defying hell, and the Devil too.
But there's no joy in self-delusion;
Your search for truth ends in confusion.
Don't imagine your teaching will ever raise
The minds of men or change their ways.
And as for worldly wealth, you have none -
What honour or glory have you won?
A dog could stand this life no more.
And so I've turned to magic lore;
The spirit message of this art
Some secret knowledge might impart.
No longer shall I sweat to teach
What always lay beyond my reach;
I'll know what makes the world revolve,
Its mysteries resolve,
No more in empty words I'll deal -
Creation's wellsprings I'll reveal!
”
”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, and the Urfaust)
“
It is (to describe it figuratively) as if an author were to make a slip of the pen, and as if this clerical error became conscious of being such. Perhaps this was no error but in a far higher sense was an essential part of the whole exposition. It is, then, as if this clerical error were to revolt against the author, out of hatred for him, were to forbid him to correct it, and were to say, "No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against thee, that thou art a very poor writer.
”
”
Søren Kierkegaard
“
In 1953, Allen Dulles, then director of the USA Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), named Dr Sidney Gottlieb to direct the CIA's MKULTRA programme, which included experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new dissociated identities, new memories, and responses to hypnotic access codes. In 1972, then-CIA director Richard Helms and Gottlieb ordered the destruction of all MKULTRA records. A clerical error spared seven boxes, containing 1738 documents, over 17,000 pages. This archive was declassified through a Freedom of Information Act Request in 1977, though the names of most people, universities, and hospitals are redacted. The CIA assigned each document a number preceded by "MORI", for "Managament of Officially Released Information", the CIA's automated electronic system at the time of document release. These documents, to be referenced throughout this chapter, are accessible on the Internet (see: abuse-of-power (dot) org/modules/content/index.php?id=31). The United States Senate held a hearing exposing the abuses of MKULTRA, entitled "Project MKULTRA, the CIA's program of research into behavioral modification" (1977).
”
”
Orit Badouk Epstein (Ritual Abuse and Mind Control)
“
it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.
”
”
Lev Grossman (The Magicians and the Magician King)
“
All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.
”
”
Lev Grossman (The Magicians (The Magicians #1))
“
By the end of four years at West Point, he had capitulated to the tyranny of the clerical error and adopted Ulysses S. Grant as his new moniker for life.
”
”
Ron Chernow (Grant)
“
In 1959 Corrie was part of a group that visited Ravensbruck, which was then in East Germany, to honor Betsie and the 96,000 other women who died there. There Corrie learned that her own release had been part of a clerical error; one week later all women her age were taken to the gas chamber. When I heard Corrie speak in Darmstadt in 1968, she was 76, still traveling ceaselessly in obedience to Betsie’s certainty that they must “tell people.” Her work took her to 61 countries, including many “unreachable” ones on the other side of the Iron Curtain. To whomever she spoke—African students on the shores of Lake Victoria, farmers in a Cuban sugar field, prisoners in an English penitentiary, factory workers in Uzbekistan—she brought the truth the sisters learned in Ravensbruck: Jesus can turn loss into glory. John and I made some of those trips with her, the only way to catch this indefatigable woman long enough to
”
”
Corrie ten Boom (The Hiding Place)
“
The love between Uncle Dees and Roger was every bit as enduring as it had been immediate. They were never to be seen apart, man and dog, not since the moment of their introduction. Very quickly after their arrival in Amsterdam four years earlier, Roger had given Alma to understand that he was no longer her dog--that, in fact, he had never been her dog, nor had he ever been Ambrose's dog, but that he had been Dees' dog all along, by force of pure and plain destiny. The fact that Roger was born in distant Tahiti, whereas Dees van Devender resided in Holland, had been the result, Roger appeared to believe, of an unfortunate clerical error, now thankfully rectified.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (The Signature of All Things)
“
Look, guys, I know you mean well and you’re doing your job, but it’d be better for everyone if you all got back in your cars and drove away. Pretend like this never happened. I promise I’m not going to blow anything up and the most un-American thing I’ve ever done is root for South Korea in speed skating during the Olympics. This whole thing falls so far out of your jurisdiction it’s not even funny.” I pictured the officers cuffing Reth and reading him his rights, then trying to detain Cresseda. “Okay, it’s a little funny. But seriously. As far as you’re all concerned, I’m just a teen girl who is really far behind on planning for the dance decorating committee. And also dating an invisible boy.”
“Orders are orders,” the mustachioed man said gruffly, elbowing the men around him and startling them out of their paranormal-induced stupor. “We’re taking you in.” He walked down the steps.
I sighed. “Don’t make me call the dragon.”
He laughed, and so did most of the others, but a few looked back at Lend and the blood drained from their faces.
“Look, kid, I’m with you. I think this is all a mistake, maybe even a clerical error. We’ll figure it out at the station.”
Arianna swore, stamping her foot. “That’s it! She put her fingers to her lips and let out a shrill, earsplitting whistle. A rush of wind engulfed us as the dragon in all its serpentine glory snaked out of the trees, settling onto the ground and rearing up to stare down at all of us.
I thought I’d learn a few new words, but the men were too shocked to even swear this time.
”
”
Kiersten White (Endlessly (Paranormalcy, #3))
“
Anti-voting lawmakers perhaps weren’t intending to make it harder for married white women to vote, but that’s exactly what they did by requiring an exact name match across all forms of identification in many states in recent years. Birth certificates list people’s original surnames, but if they change their names upon marriage, their more recent forms of ID usually show their married names. Sandra Watts is a married white judge in the state of Texas who was forced to use a provisional ballot in 2013 under the state’s voter ID law. She was outraged at the imposition: “Why would I want to vote provisional ballot when I’ve been voting regular ballot for the last forty-nine years?” Like many women, she included her maiden name as her middle name when she took her husband’s last name—and that’s what her driver’s license showed. But on the voter rolls, her middle name was the one her parents gave her at birth, which she no longer used. And like that, she lost her vote—all because of a law intended to suppress people like Judge Watts’s fellow Texan Anthony Settles, a Black septuagenarian and retired engineer. Anthony Settles was in possession of his Social Security card, an expired Texas identification card, and his old University of Houston student ID, but he couldn’t get a new photo ID to vote in 2016 because his mother had changed his name when she remarried in 1964. Several lawyers tried to help him track down the name-change certificate in courthouses, to no avail; his only recourse was to go to court for a new one, at a cost of $250. Elderly, rural, and low-income voters are more likely not to have birth certificates or to have documents containing clerical errors. Hargie Randell, a legally blind Black Texan who couldn’t drive but who had a current voter registration card used before the new Texas law, had to arrange for people to drive him to the Department of Public Safety office three times, and once to the county clerk’s office an hour away, only to end up with a birth certificate that spelled his name wrong by one letter.
”
”
Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together)
“
The Clintons’ last act before leaving the White House was to take stuff that didn’t belong to them. The Clintons took china, furniture, electronics, and art worth around $360,000. Hillary literally went through the rooms of the White House with an aide, pointing to things that she wanted taken down from shelves or out of cabinets or off the wall. By Clinton theft standards $360,000 is not a big sum, but it certainly underlines the couple’s insatiable greed—these people are not bound by conventional limits of propriety or decency. When the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee blew the whistle on this misappropriation, the Clintons first claimed that the stuff was given to them as gifts. Unfortunately for Hillary, gifts given to a president belong to the White House—they are not supposed to be spirited away by the first lady. The Clintons finally agreed to return $28,000 worth of gifts and reimburse the government $95,000, representing a fraction of the value of what they took. One valuable piece of art the Clintons attempted to steal was a Norman Rockwell painting showing the flame from Lady Liberty’s torch. Hillary had the painting taken from the Oval Office to the Clinton home in Chappaqua, but the Secret Service got wind of it and sent a car to Chappaqua to get it back. Hillary was outraged. Even here, though, the Clintons got the last laugh: they persuaded the Obama administration to let the Clinton Library have the painting, and there it hangs today. In Living History, Hillary put on a straight face and dismissed media reports about the topic. “The culture of investigation,” she wrote, “followed us out the door of the White House when clerical errors in the recording of gifts mushroomed into a full-blown flap, generating hundreds of news stories over several months.”17
”
”
Dinesh D'Souza (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party)
“
In 1959 Corrie was part of a group that visited Ravensbruck, which was then in East Germany, to honor Betsie and the 96,000 other women who died there. There Corrie learned that her own release had been part of a clerical error; one week later all women her age were taken to the gas chamber.
”
”
Corrie ten Boom (The Hiding Place)
“
You have another young patient on immunotherapy? Here at Duke?" I repeat slowly, as Dr. Cartwright chats amicably about how he managed to secure the same drug for him too. Months ago. Months I have spent traveling to Atlanta, whittling down my family's savings and relying on the charity of others. Months of arguing with insurance companies---because treatment was administered out of state---contesting payments and fielding phone calls with bill collectors over clerical errors. I have been hooked to a bag of chemotherapy fluid that could have been administered by pills? I have been getting on a plane when I could have been walking down the hallway in my own institution?
”
”
Kate Bowler (No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear)
“
the religious view that morals were determined by processes incomprehensible to us may at any rate be truer (even if not exactly in the way intended) than the rationalist delusion that man, by exercising his intelligence, invented morals that gave him the power to achieve more than he could ever foresee. If we bear these things in mind, we can better understand and appreciate those clerics who are said to have become somewhat sceptical of the validity of some of their teachings and who yet continued to teach them because they feared that a loss of faith would lead to a decline of morals.
”
”
Friedrich A. Hayek (The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1))
“
You see it in the 36 percent increase between 2004 and 2007 in lawsuits against attorneys for legal mistakes—the most common being simple administrative errors, like missed calendar dates and clerical screwups, as well as errors in applying the law. You see it in flawed software design, in foreign intelligence failures, in our tottering banks—in fact, in almost any endeavor requiring mastery of complexity and of large amounts of knowledge. Such
”
”
Atul Gawande (The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right)
“
growing up was a clerical error which would eventually be rectified.
”
”
Anonymous
“
May the spirit of death make a clerical error and forget you exist.
”
”
John Jackson Miller (Star Wars: The Rise of the Empire)
“
the 36 percent increase between 2004 and 2007 in lawsuits against attorneys for legal mistakes—the most common being simple administrative errors, like missed calendar dates and clerical screwups, as well as errors in applying the law.
”
”
Atul Gawande (The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right)
“
I believe there’s been a clerical error, my dear. We’ll figure it out when the dust settles.
”
”
Nicola Rendell (Professed)
“
You said you’d welcome competition, yet you went and pulled some strings to drive away the first person to challenge you.”
“I told you already. There must’ve been a clerical error.” She crossed her arms. “And scared? Please. My barbecue’s the best—I could beat anyone’s sauce, any day.” Her voice squeaked on the last word, and he let one corner of his mouth lift.
“From what I heard around the market this morning, it’s your grandfather’s sauce, not yours.
”
”
Chandra Blumberg (Stirring Up Love (Taste of Love, #2))
“
CNN reported: “An agent working for the FBI’s background check system, who was performing the review on Roof, failed to contact the Columbia, South Carolina, police department which arrested Roof — in part because of a clerical error in records, listing the wrong agency.”11 Most people know that any felony conviction, even a non-violent one, precludes you from ever legally owning a gun. Even a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction will ban you from having a gun. Just being charged with a state offense that could result in a prison term of two years is sufficient for you to lose your right to buy a gun.
”
”
John Lott (Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control)
“
All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy
”
”
Lev Grossman (The Magicians (The Magicians, #1))
“
You can mug a man or pick his pocket and anyone would call you a thief, but there are a million ways to cheat a man on paper and just call it a clerical error
”
”
Elliott Kay (Poor Man's Fight (Poor Man's Fight, #1))
“
In his autobiography Clerical Error, Kaiser explains that he left the order before ordination because he felt that he could better implement the Jesuits’ goals by working directly for the CIA as Time magazine’s Rome correspondent during the Second Vatican Council. During the soirees he hosted at his posh Rome apartment on Time’s lavish expense account, Kaiser met Malachi Martin, another Jesuit who had also become a double agent. Martin was being paid by both B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Committee to subvert the Catholic claim that the Jews had killed Christ.
”
”
E. Michael Jones (Pope Francis in Context: Have the End Times Arrived in Buenos Aires?)
“
When it comes to voter fraud, here are the facts: It’s exceedingly rare. It happens between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent of the time. Out of one billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014, research revealed a paltry thirty-one instances of voters casting fraudulent votes in person. It almost never happens. Most problems with improper voting stem from clerical and computer errors. According to scholars affiliated with Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Yale University, during the 2012 election cycle, the possibility that a registered voter would commit fraud by voting twice was under 0.02 percent.12 Fraud is more likely to be committed by campaigns engaging in fraudulent voter registrations or fraudulent absentee ballot applications or submissions.13
”
”
Kim Wehle (What You Need to Know About Voting—and Why (Legal Expert Series))