A bureaucrat's idea of cleaning up his files is to make a copy of everything
before he destroys it.

"...'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not
matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality
and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his
fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the
world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon
reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles
as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming."
-- Siddartha, _Lord_of_Light_ by Roger Zelazny