Quotes About Bureaucracy

Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling.

Drop dead-but first get permit

Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling—

He even let himself be vaccinated again rather than go back to the I Spy and dig out the piece of paper that showed he had been vaccinated on arrival Earthside a few weeks earlier.

As Paul Watzlawick notes, that which is objectively repressed (unspeakable) soon becomes subjectively repressed (unthinkable). Nobody likes to feel like a coward and a liar constantly. It is easier to cease to notice where the official tunnel-reality differs from existential fact. Thus SNAFU accelerates and rigiditus bureaucraticus sets in — the last stage before all brain activity ceases and the pyramid is clinically dead as an intellectual entity.

Chee was clearly mystified and impressed at the vagaries of the federal system.

You have death certificates? Death certificates? This is Afghanistan we're talking about. Most people there don't have birth certificates.

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.

God, it stinks," I said, hand over my nose as he pulled me into a long step. Al strode forward, head high. "It's the stench of bureaucracy, my itchy-witch, and why I chose to go into human resources when but a wee lad.

Like at the DMV when you've passed your driver's test and had a really bad picture taken and you're waiting for them to bring you your license? Jack said. Exactly, only without the filth and peasants, Aphrodite said.

Over the years I have felt that both the IAS and IPS have developed a kind of feudal class consciousness that does not go well with the service to the people that India needs. Their initial idealism begins to diminish within a few years of service and they gradually become part of the furniture.

Mr Gandhi thought)...The parliament system was too slow at times unproductive , and it never gave a free hand to the person at the top....

The problem was that unimaginably stupid had become a job requirement in Washington.

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

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.

As bureaucracies accumulate power, they become immune to their own mistakes. Instead of changing their stories to fit reality, they can change reality to fit their stories. In

In illiterate societies people make all calculations and decisions in their heads. In literate societies people are organised into networks, so that each person is only a small step in a huge algorithm, and it is the algorithm as a whole that makes the important decisions. This is the essence of bureaucracy. Think

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

As bureaucracies accumulate power, they become immune to their own mistakes. Instead of changing their stories to fit reality, they can change reality to fit their stories. In the end external reality matches their bureaucratic fantasies, but only because they forced reality to do so.

Officials kept writing scrolls, collecting taxes, sending orders and oiling the gears of the pharaonic machine.

Free association and holistic thought have given way to compartmentalisation and bureaucracy.

in practical terms there are surprisingly few differences between Shiite Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabia, and Jewish Israel. All are bureaucratic nation-states, all pursue more or less capitalist policies, all vaccinate kids against polio, and all rely on chemists and physicists to make bombs. There is no such thing as Shiite bureaucracy, Sunni capitalism, or Jewish physics. So how do we make people feel loyal to one human tribe and hostile to another?

There is nothing at which government is more adept or diligent than relieving people of their money.

More harm was done in the 20th century by faceless bureaucrats than tyrant dictators.