Inefficiency Quotes

• The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.

  Pope John Paul II

  Country, Socialist Countries, Historical

  Pope John Paul II (1996). “The Encyclicals of John Paul II”, Our Sunday Visitor (IN)

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• All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Revolution, Unendurable

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.5, Hayes Barton Press

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• The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

  Bill Gates

  Business, Technology, Marketing

  Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold, Peter Rinearson (1996). “The Road Ahead”, Wheeler Pub Incorporated

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• We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.

  Eamon de Valera

  Waste, Idleness

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• There are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency; and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient.

  Josh Billings

  Two, People, Quality

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• It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Government, Effort, Sloth

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”, p.36, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Every good cause is worth some inefficiency.

  Paul Samuelson

  Causes, Environment, Very Good

  "An Elder Challenges Outsourcing's Orthodoxy" by Steve Lohr, www.nytimes.com. September 9, 2004.

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• Unless structure follows strategy, inefficiency results.

  Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

  Leadership, Strategy, Structure

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• Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government-- in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.

  Milton Friedman

  Motivation, Military, Loss

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• Unfortunately, we are finding the bureaucratic inefficiencies and red tape have a tendency to slow the efforts of individuals and communities working to rebuild.

  Bobby Jindal

  Effort, Community, Tape

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• My mother's illness fitted into this protest against the treatment of the sick who could not pay, the inefficiency of commercialism, the waste, the extravagance, and the poverty.

  Ellen Wilkinson

  Mother, Sick, Poverty

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• An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

  Eugene McCarthy

  Liberty, Bureaucracy, Threat

  Eugene J. McCarthy (2004). “Parting Shots from My Brittle Bow: Reflections on American Politics and Life”, p.109, Fulcrum Publishing

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• Wall Street sees a social fabric or social contract as inefficiencies, which need to be removed.

  David Korten

  Wall, Needs, Fabric

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• The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is its inefficiency.

  Eugene McCarthy

  Liberty, Politics, Libertarian

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• The inability to envision a certain kind of person doing a certain kind of thing because you've never seen someone who looks like him do it before is not just a vice. It's a luxury. What begins as a failure of the imagination ends as a market inefficiency: when you rule out an entire class of people from doing a job simply by their appearance, you are less likely to find the best person for the job.

  Michael Lewis

  Jobs, Class, Luxury

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• In this country protection has always, to some extent, existed; but at some times it has been efficient, and at others not; and our tendency toward freedom or slavery has always been in the direct ratio of its efficiency or inefficiency.

  Henry Charles Carey

  Country, Slavery, Ratios

  Henry Charles Carey (1859). “The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign: Why it Exists, and how it May be Extinguished”, p.365

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• Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.

  Albert Ellis

  Thinking, Efficiency, Genes

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• The average man has a carefully cultivated ignorance about household matters - from what to do with the crumbs to the grocer's telephone number - a sort of cheerful inefficiency which protects him.

  Crystal Eastman

  Ignorance, Men, Average

  Crystal Eastman (1978). “Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.

  Noam Chomsky

  Serious, Well Known, Wells

  "My Interview With Noam Chomsky on the Economy". Interview with Ben Cohen, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 4, 2008.

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• There is no remedy for the inefficiency of public management.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Management, Remedy

  Ludwig Von Mises (1990). “Economic freedom and interventionism: an anthology of articles and essays”

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• Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status.

  Greg Bear

  Grief, Accepting, Productive

  Greg Bear (2014). “Eon”, p.117, Open Road Media

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• Because it is a monopoly, government brings inefficiency and stagnation to most things it runs; government agencies pursue the inflation of their budgets rather than the service of their customers; pressure groups form an unholy alliance with agencies to extract more money from taxpayers for their members. Yet despite all this, most clever people still call for government to run more things and assume that if it did so, it would somehow be more perfect, more selfless, next time.

  Matt Ridley

  Running, Clever, Agency

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• An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Office, Community

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.216, Graphic Arts Books

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• We accept, without sufficient consideration, a system that breeds inefficiencies and actually encourages the creation of shortages.

  Jacque Fresco

  Creation, Consideration, Accepting

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• For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.

  Eric Ambler

  Science, Law, Internet

  Eric Ambler (2001). “A Coffin for Dimitrios”, Vintage

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