Bureaucracy Quotes - Page 4

• If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.

  Hyman Rickover

  Inspirational, Funny, Twilight

  The New York Times, November 3, 1986.

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• Entrenched bureaucracies are always opposed to fundamental changes.

  Christopher Dodd

  Fundamentals

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• The income tax has spawned an intrusive bureaucracy, creating so much complexity and red tape that millions of ordinary citizens have to go get some accountant to fill out the forms for them - and then sign under penalty of perjury that it was done right. If you knew how to do it right, you wouldn't have to go to somebody else to have it done, would you?

  Thomas Sowell

  Creating, Ordinary, Income

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• Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Government, Rebellious, Proposal

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”, p.85, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.

  Harry S. Truman

  Humorous, Office, Political

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• The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

  Alain de Botton

  Country, May, Developing Countries

  Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.40, Penguin UK

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• Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

  Leon Trotsky

  Harmony, Social, Social Harmony

  Leon Trotsky (2012). “The Revolution Betrayed”, p.40, Courier Corporation

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• A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

  Aldous Huxley

  Country, War, Tyrants

  Aldous Huxley (1937). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization”, p.71, Transaction Publishers

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• The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.

  Brooks Atkinson

  Responsibility, Men, Perfect

  Brooks Atkinson (1951). “Once around the sun”

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• It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the earth can sustain, and that human civilization will collapse when the number of, say, tax lawyers exceeds the world's total population of farmers, weavers, fisherpersons, and pediatric nurses.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Civilization, Numbers, Nurse

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• Bureaucracy by its nature resists change and nullifies progress.

  James Cook

  Progress

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• Other countries, such as Israel, successfully employ behavior detection techniques at their airports, but the bloated, ineffective bureaucracy of TSA has produced another security failure for U.S. transportation systems.

  John Mica

  Country, Airports, Israel

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• If we did not have such a thing as an airplane today, we would probably create an agency the size of NASA to build one.

  Ross Perot

  Airplane, Today, Size

  "Ross Perot Speaks Out".

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• The minute health care becomes a huge, unwieldy, expensive government bureaucracy it's a permanent feature of life and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

  Mark Steyn

  Government, Care, Minutes

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• We will have bigger bureaucracies, bigger labor unions, and bigger state-run corporations. It will be harder to be an entrepreneur because of punitive taxes and regulations. The rewards of success will be expropriated for the sake of attaining greater income equality.

  Arthur C. Brooks

  Running, Equality, Entrepreneur

  Arthur C. Brooks (2011). “The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future”, p.63, Basic Books

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• Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Inspirational, Funny, Money

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”, p.24, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the Earth can sustain.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Numbers, Paper, Earth

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• One of the enduring truths of the nation's capital is that bureaucrats survive.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Endure, Bureaucrats, Nations

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• The U.N. bureaucracy has grown to elephantine proportions. Now that the Cold War is over, we are asking that elephant to do gymnastics.

  Madeleine Albright

  War, Gymnastics, Elephants

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• What comes after the revolution is inevitably bureaucracy. Whoever wins the revolution builds a bureaucracy

  Sean Parker

  Winning, Revolution

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• It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.

  H. L. Mencken

  Law, Voting, Facts

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• Remember: Bureaucracy elevates conformity ... Make that elevates 'fatal stupidity' to the status of religion.

  Frank Herbert

  Stupidity, Conformity, Remember

  Frank Herbert (1987). “Chapterhouse: Dune”, p.96, Penguin

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• Isaiah Berlin described the intellectuals of [Mikhail] Bakunin's "Red bureaucracy" as a "secular priesthood.

  Noam Chomsky

  Berlin, Red, Priesthood

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corrpution and error hardwired at inception.

  Jasper Fforde

  Men, Errors, Inception

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• A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.

  Walter Bagehot

  Freedom, Government, Democracy

  Walter Bagehot (1951). “Literary Studies”

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