Quotes About Bureaucracy

#1. Part of my mandate is to curb corruption and streamline a cumbersome, graft-ridden bureaucracy, to put resources where they will provide the clearest results, and to untangle a complicated regulatory environment.

Benigno Aquino III

#2. Well, who is more likely to volunteer to take a job in a bureaucracy that has little to recommend it except that it gives you the power to use government force to control the lives of others? A dispassionate scientist or a zealot? In government, the zealots eventually take over.

John Stossel

#3. But why, Mr. Stendahl, why all this? What obsessed you?" "Bureaucracy, Mr. Garrett. But I haven't time to explain. The government will discover soon enough." He nodded to the ape. "All right. Now." The ape killed Mr. Garrett.

Ray Bradbury

#4. We must fight against negativeness - especially bureaucracy, corruption and wastefulness.

Nong Duc Manh

#5. In reality, we've had more spending, more bureaucracy, more waste and higher costs but without necessary reform nor rising productivity.

Andrew Lansley

#6. It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure.

David Foster Wallace

#7. If we overregulate, over control, impose too many burdens and too much bureaucracy - or if we do it across the board, without taking into account the differences among businesses and their relative impact on society - that could make people risk-averse and dampen the entrepreneurial spirit.

Samuel J. Palmisano

#8. If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.

C. Northcote Parkinson

#9. I sighed. I hated the maze of bureaucracy with a passion, but I've found the best way to deal with it is to smile and act stupid. That way, no one gets confused.

Kim Harrison

#10. Any government, whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, a communistic or free enterprise bureaucracy, will fall when its hierarchy reaches an intolerable state of maturity.

Laurence J. Peter

#11. The answer for healthcare is market incentives, not healthcare by a Godzilla-sized government bureaucracy.

Mitt Romney

#12. When millions of dollars and thousands of humanitarian workers poured into Indonesia, we quickly faced the challenge of coordinating our own bureaucracy with the multitudes of approaches and priorities the donor community wanted to pursue.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati

#13. French is the language of diplomacy. Spanish is the language of bureaucracy.

Ernest Hemingway,

#14. My measures will not be crippled by any bureaucracy. Here I don't have to worry about Justice; my mission is only to destroy and to exterminate; nothing more.

Hermann Goring

#15. The bureaucracy has grown such powerful roots in Russia, and corruption is so widespread, that people from opposition have no interest in changing anything.

Vladimir Sorokin

#16. Leaks are good. There is too much secrecy in our government. Sometimes the government knows about a problem and it takes a leak to embarrass the bureaucracy and get them to do something about it.

Joan Claybrook

#17. As a bureaucracy becomes more established, it develops its own career structure. It is less dependent, and should be less dependent, on individual personalities. Absolutely no one is indispensable.

John Scarlett

#18. That is why I strongly believe we should working in Congress to make America a better place to run a business by reducing the costly burdens of bureaucracy and red tape.

Michael K. Simpson

#19. Bureaucracy, as Hannah Arendt defined it: the rule of nobody. Roll

Joseph Heller

#20. In all countries with a settled bureaucracy people used to say: The cabinets come and go, but the bureaus remain.

Ludwig Von Mises

#21. The court is the bureaucracy of the law. If you bureaucratise popular justice then you give it the form of a court.

Michel Foucault

#22. The Japanese bureaucracy is unique. It is also very powerful, although it is now the object of so much criticism. Many of Japan's brightest made it a pillar of strength and continuity.

F. Sionil Jose

#23. They [Greenpeace] forgot their original purpose and turned into a big, rich bureaucracy, more interested in fund-raising than in saving lives, so I got fed up and quit ... they're a bunch of wimps.

Paul Watson

#24. these guys had been utterly defeated, not by mortal combat, but by a far more formidable foe - human bureaucracy.

R.E. Vance

#25. In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.[Pournelle's law of Bureaucracy]

Jerry Pournelle

#26. Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Franz Kafka

#27. There is no justice in bureaucracy for the individual, for bureaucracy caters only to itself. One cannot practice the same bureaucracy as one is fighting against.

Leon Trotsky

#28. After the reunification, there was a certain sense of foreignness because daily life in the former East German states was completely turned inside out - everything from the shops to the bureaucracy to the working world.

Angela Merkel

#29. The speed with which bureaucracy has invaded almost every branch of human activity is something astounding once one thinks about it.

Simone Weil

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

Frank Herbert

#31. Paperwork is the embalming fluid of bureaucracy, maintaining an appearance of life where none exists.

Robert H. Meltzer

#32. Shit rolls downhill. Bureaucracy rolls faster.

David Wellington

#33. You can't be for big government, big taxes, and big bureaucracy and still be for wealth creation

Ziad K. Abdelnour

#34. The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it's not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can't teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It's terrible.

Steve Jobs

#35. Learning and education are a normal part of everyday life and do not need a vast expensive bureaucracy to force them to happen.

Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

#36. The terrors of the future will not come from the drab repressions of an encroaching bureaucracy, but from the neon lights of a thousand supermarkets, the sounds of a million automobile accidents and from the public cremation of the dead astronauts as they return to earth.

Christopher Riche Evans

#37. FEMA has lost its focus, and Floridians know first-hand of the agency's shortcomings, .. Natural disaster preparedness and response programs have become trapped in a homeland security bureaucracy.

Alcee Hastings

#38. Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

Frank Herbert

#39. The State is a collection of officials, different for difference purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats.

Bertrand Russell

#40. The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.

Bernard Crick

#41. In any government bureaucracy, they are not working for you but for the mythical blob called the 'public sector,' which is really nothing but a stash of stolen cash divided among the robber class.

Llewellyn Rockwell

#42. Bureaucracy is the rule of nobody and is therefore experienced as tyranny.

Lesslie Newbigin

#43. Rather than Surrender to Bureaucracy, take it upon yourself to break it

Scott Belsky

#44. I always enjoyed the kids, but I didn't enjoy the bureaucracy of the educational system.

Dean Koontz

#45. Anyone who has ever dealt with the tax authorities, the educational system or any other complex bureaucracy knows that the truth hardly matters. What's written on your form is far more important.

Yuval Noah Harari

#46. As Max Weber long ago pointed out, once one sets up a genuinely effective bureaucracy, it's almost impossible to get rid of it.

David Graeber

#47. Publicly, we're saying we're better at fighting terrorism. Privately, we know that the bureaucracy has only gotten worse, since the high-level people are scared of being held responsible for 9/11.

David Hunt

#48. After seventy-eight days and 2,200 miles, the enterprise was in serious trouble - not from crocodiles, hippos, bandits, diseases, or even bureaucracy - but from simple human conflict.

Richard Bangs

#49. The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

George Bernard Shaw

#50. Bureaucracy gives birth to itself and then expects maternity benefits.

Dale Dauten

#51. The minute you're working with the government, you're dealing with bureaucracy, you're dealing with time lags, you're dealing with rigidity, you're dealing with a slow pace.

Bob Simon

#52. Because Reagan once said, you can't be for big government, big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy. Boy,

Ted Cruz

#53. the bureaucracy gets ridiculous and the legal implications of opening your mouth has you more concerned about losing your job than actually solving the problem.

Paul Carter

#54. We say that word [bureaucracy] with such contempt. But it's that contempt that keeps this thing that we own and we pay for as something that's working against us.

Jennifer Pahlka

#55. We need first of all the reform of our justice system. We need reform of the education system, because of quality of education because of innovation and technology. And we need administrative reform. Too much bureaucracy.

Iveta Radicova

#56. We will cut programs, we will try to rein in the size of the bureaucracy. We will bring federal pay scales that have become so exaggerated into line with market rates.

Eric Cantor

#57. The science only perpetuates the vicious cycle of cronyism, power-mongering, influence peddling, corruption, bureaucracy, all of that.

Deepak Chopra

#58. Catholics form a majority in Chile, although there are more and more Evangelicals and Pentacostals who irritate everyone because they have a direct understanding with God while everyone else must pass through the priestly bureaucracy.

Isabel Allende

#59. Innovation is the lifeblood of an organization. Knowing how to lead and work with creative people requires knowledge and action that often goes against the typical organizational structure. Protect unusual people from bureaucracy and legalism typical of organizations.

Max De Pree

#60. We need to remind our core supporters that we have not forgotten their concern with the way our democracy is being replaced by European bureaucracy in so many areas.

John Redwood

#61. The Chipko activists have always been close to my parents, since my father was among the few forestry officials who supported them within the bureaucracy. And I was involved with the Chipko movement in my student days.

Vandana Shiva

#62. As capital becomes more and more organised, it tends to pull together all its different strands, bringing a statist element to the enterprise, a bourgeois element to the trade-union bureaucracy, and a social element to public administration.

Anonymous

#63. Some third person decides your fate: this is the whole essence of bureaucracy.

Kollontai Alexandra

#64. Iowans are feeling the pinch of a big federal government, and elected officials like Bruce Braley keep championing the over reaching bureaucracy. Iowans know what is best for Iowa more than Washington politicians and bureaucrats do.

Joni Ernst

#65. Congress, the press, and the bureaucracy too often focus on how much money or effort is spent, rather than whether the money or effort actually achieves the announced goal.

Donald Rumsfeld

#66. For a generation and more, the government has sought to meet our needs by multiplying its bureaucracy. Washington has taken too much in taxes from Main Street, and Main Street has received too little in return. It is not necessary to centralize power in order to solve our problems.

George McGovern

#67. Bureaucracy, safely repeating today what it did yesterday, rolls on as ineluctably as some vast computer, which, once penetrated by error, duplicates it forever.

Barbara Tuchman

#68. Be prepared for the creation of an intrusive bureaucracy to police the ordinance by examining the books and payroll ledgers of businesses ...

Randy Hamilton

#69. I love a novel that's funny, and The Taxman Cometh is very funny, delightfully well-written, yet with a serious message about how government bureaucracy affects us all. Read. Enjoy. And if a comparison to Catch 22 pops into your mind, that's not surprising.

Marvin Kalb

#70. Strive to make proposed solutions as self-executing as possible. As the degree of discretion increases, so too does bureaucracy, delay, and expense.

Donald Rumsfeld

#71. The challenge is to manage the Web in an open way-not too much bureaucracy, not subject to political or commercial pressures. The U.S. should demonstrate that it is prepared to share control with the world.

Tim Berners-Lee

#72. I don't want a lot of bureaucracy ... I want to run state government the same way we run a campaign - efficient, effective and victorious.

Charlie Crist

#73. Such schemes take money from people who can least afford to spend it to support an unneeded bureaucracy that eats money people thought they were providing for education.

Jesse Helms

#74. President Lyndon Johnson once said, "If the first person who answers the phone cannot answer your question, it is a bureaucracy." Don

Robert M. Gates

#75. Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.

Walter Bagehot

#76. Corporatists like Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet were bent on constructing the Brussels-based bureaucracy as a democracy-free zone.

Yanis Varoufakis

#77. STEVE: No, we maintain the accounts offshore, just until we get approvals. BILL: To get around approvals? STEVE: To get around approvals until we get approvals. There's a lot of red tape, a lot of bureaucracy. I

Tracy Letts

#78. It [government] was a cancerous mass of bureaucracy that thrived just below the surface of stately marble buildings.

Steven W. Horn

#79. The rule of Nobody ... is what the political form known as bureaucracy truly is.

Hannah Arendt

#80. The IMF was a more formal and less fun place to work than Treasury. The meetings were endless, with crushing bureaucracy, an intrusive and fractious executive board, an appalling amount of paper, and a lot of factional conflict among various fiefdoms.

Timothy F. Geithner

#81. Once genius is submerged by bureaucracy, a nation is doomed to mediocrity.

Richard M. Nixon

#82. 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

#83. We have this idea of bureaucracy in local government, and it's generally things that we're frustrated at. It doesn't work the way we like it to work.

Jennifer Pahlka

#84. Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.

Ronald Reagan

#85. Citizens everywhere, and especially soldiers, should remember that entrenched bureaucracy, whatever the level, can be overcome. You've got to stick to it, be polite but firm, and just not take no for an answer.

William G. Bainbridge

#86. Rethink every aspect of bureaucracy.

Newt Gingrich

#87. Given the slow pace of Washington's bureaucracy, policymakers are often busy solving yesterday's problems. This rearview mirror approach afflicts Mr. Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress.

Fred Upton

#88. Well, first, the situation in Afghanistan is much better than it was. But there is no comparison between Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq has a bureaucracy, Iraq has wealth. Iraq has an educated class of people who are positioned to come in and take over.

Peter T. King

#89. I'm against big bureaucracy in Washington making health care decisions. I just have an aversion to bureaucrats. But it's not just government bureaucrats. I don't like HMO bureaucrats and insurance company bureaucrats either.

Gary Bauer

#90. Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients.

Alan Keyes

#91. When you make a movie, it's just a huge bureaucracy because movies cost so much money. Millions of people get involved, and pretty soon the creative idea gets tramped on and watered down or filtered through a huge system.

Madonna Ciccone

#92. The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.

John Stuart Mill

#93. The factory model of education is a gargantuan bureaucracy. Some kids are good fits - I wasn't. The system gives you bad grades and tells you you're stupid. You don't think, 'If this kid's not a good fit, it could be the system's fault.'

Jose Ferreira

#94. My chief job is to constantly stir or rekindle the curiosity of people that gets driven out by bureaucracy and formal schooling systems.

Akio Morita

#95. For men, as they get bogged down with responsibilities, commitments, bureaucracy, it is a fantasy just to think of shedding everything literally, walking away with nothing at all, and just hitting the road.

Lee Child

#96. The technical genius which could find answers ... was not cooped up in military or civilian bureaucracy, but was to be found in universities and in the people at large.

Henry H. Arnold

#97. Well, what did we buy? Instead of a leaner, smarter government, we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which light bulbs to buy, and which will put 16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing President Obama's health care bill.

Michele Bachmann

#98. What I've said about compromise, I hope to build a conservative majority so bipartisanship becomes Democrats joining Republicans to roll back the size of government, reduce the bureaucracy, and get America moving again.

Richard Mourdock

#99. It's the first rule of bureaucracy: any message worth sending is worth sending in triplicate.

Paolo Bacigalupi

#100. The German passion for bureaucracy
for written and signal forms ... to move about, to work, to exist
is like a steel pin pinning each French individual to a sheet of paper, the way an entomologist pins each specimen insect ...

Janet Flanner