Quotes About Bureaucracy

The federal government is enormous; it never shrinks. And the interest is killing us.

From aloof academics to career government cronies, President Barack Obama filled his Cabinet with individuals whose greatest achievements were dreaming up unworkable Democratic utopias from the far off perches of academia and Washington bureaucracy.

It's hard to get fired from the government. You have to, like, kill people.

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.

In any bureaucracy, there's a natural tendency to let the system become an excuse for inaction.

When you get big, there's a tendency to get caught up in process and bureaucracy.

In the early 1940s the social democratic refugee Franz Neumann argued in his classic Behemoth that a "cartel" of party, industry, army, and bureaucracy ruled Nazi Germany, held together only by "profit, power, prestige, and especially fear."1

The man gave me a stack of papers and said that one of the most painful things about death was the paperwork. I

Washington is a place where politicians don't know which way is up and taxes don't know which way is down.

You are attempting to be logical, I suspect, and logic has little to do with government, and nothing at all to do with military administration.

Su padre y el Estado Mayor ya lo intentaron hace quince años; les llevó dos años poner los reglamentos al día. - Bueno, eso es lo que pasa con los comités.

A capitalist society requires certain preconditions. Among other things, it must establish a rule of law through enforceable contracts; respect private property; create a trustworthy bureaucracy to arbitrate legal disputes; and offer patents and other protections to promote invention

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

The best minds are not in government.

I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.

The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.

As smart as he was, though, I suspect even FDR didn't realize that once you created a bureaucracy, it took on a life of its own. It was almost impossible to close down a bureaucracy once it had been created.

The first rule of a bureaucracy is to protect the bureaucracy. If the people running the welfare program had let their clientele find other ways of making a living, that would have reduced their importance and their budget.

No government has ever voluntarily reduced itself in size—and that, in a way, became my theme.

No fairyland is Capua—still, 'tis better Than other lands. St. Vincent licked the stamp and signed the letter, And bound the bands Of that foul, frail red tape which strangles ever The honest energetic fool's endeavour.

Many thinkers worry over the progressive bureaucratization of the world and the social threat of its terror. Yet they forget that these very bureaucrats are themselves terrorized, and that they are terrorized by their desks. Once plunked down behind one, a man will never learn to tear himself free.