Quotes About Bureaucracy

We have to create that strength, and sometimes we have to reduce bureaucracy. It just gets in our way.

Whoever can survive the stress involved in every institutional/documentation process, etc in Nigeria can survive anywhere.

At each instant citizens fall under the control of the public administration; they are brought insensibly and almost without their knowing it to sacrifice new parts of their individual independence to it every day, and the same men who from time to time overturn a throne and ride roughshod over kings bend more and more without resistance to the slightest will of a clerk.

I'm just a civil servant. We take the taxpayer's money and try not to do any work at all.

As commander of a battalion his trade had been to fight the enemy with steel. As a staff officer, it seemed, his role was to fight his own side with paper, more secretary than soldier. He felt like a man trying to push a huge stone up a hill. Straining and straining, getting nowhere, but unable to stop pushing in case the rock should fall and crush him. Meanwhile, arrogant bastards who were in just the same danger lazed on the slopes beside him saying, "Well, it's not my rock.

Government by committee! Everyone pulling their own way! You can only react, never prepare!

I tried to get through to my brother, Mike, on the Moon, but the phone company wouldn't let me place the call until I had signed a contract and posted a $25,000 bond.

A good sign that an army has been around too long is that it starts getting top-heavy with officers.

Croma staff officers, it seemed, liked to make things unnecessarily complicated just as human ones did.

She'd come to find civil administration more interesting than war. It's certainly more complicated.

Alle Revolutionselemente, alles Menschheitsempörende, was sie wo anders in Großen haben, das haben wir Krähwinkler in Kleinen. Wir haben ein absolutes Tyrannerl, unsern Bürgermeister, wir haben ein unverantwortliches Ministeriumerl, ein Bureaukratieerl, ein Censurerl, Stadtschulderln weit über unsere Kräfterln, also müssen wir auch ein Revolutionerl und durch's Revolutionerl ein Constitutionerl und ein Freyheiterl krieg'n.

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

It is highly improbable that the bureaucrat will put his life on the line. It is absolutely impossible that he'll put his job on the line.

Government [is] operated by deeply embedded, hopelessly entangled bureaus where nothing is accomplished because the function of the bureau is to intercept every living idea and smother it.

My fairy-tale life ended the moment I wanted to apply for a passport.

I had found that universities were no different from any other large organisation; the same timid conformity, the same stifling bureaucracy, was equally present in those supposed temples of creative thought and free expression as in the most faceless corporation.

As I turned to the chapters dedicated to operations in North Vietnam, the ridiculous gave way to the absurd. I couldn't discern whether the enemy was the North Vietnamese or the U.S. Navy. The enemy might just as easily have been the State Department or even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They all seemed to have a voice in the ROE, and the tone of the voice was seldom in favor of winning the war, defeating the enemy, or even ensuring the fighter pilot's chances of survival.

And the so-called 'political process' is a fraud: Our elected officials, like our bureaucratic functionaries, like even our judges, are largely the indentured servants of the commercial interests.

In fact, among the people I met, the term soviet served essentially as a synonym for 'fucked up'. I'd been in the country about three days when a car that was sent to take me to an interview failed to start. After several attempts to get it going, the driver turned to me, smiled wearily and explained: 'Soviet car'. By that time, that was all the explanation I needed.

the Roman state was remarkably nonbureaucratic; with no police force

Alex listened as the two men argued, neither really listening to what the other had to say. So this was how the government worked!

if you surrounded murder with enough forms and procedures, if you could convince yourself that it was an absolute necessity, then ultimately it would not be murder at all.

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.

The Greek people deserve an economy that is not burdened forever by a heavy bureaucracy and a bloated public sector.