Quotes About Bureaucracy

The essence of policy is its contingency; its success depends on the correctness of an estimate which is in part conjectural. The essence of bureaucracy is its quest for safety; its success is calculability . . . The attempt to conduct policy bureaucratically leads to a quest for calculability which tends to become a prisoner of events.

Stalin's power consisted of three distinct elements: total control of the party bureaucracy, total control of the means of communication Ã¢â'¬â€œ with the Kremlin telephone network as the central hub Ã¢â'¬â€œ and total control of a secret police staffed by men who themselves lived in fear.

government had degenerated into what has been called an 'administrative' or 'managerial' state, hierarchical and bureaucratic in its mode of operation, dedicated to generating ever more complicated regulation that had precisely the opposite effect of that intended.

My dad was a civil servant, and my mum was a secretary.

NASA, like every government organization, has some bureaucracy, which can become slimmer.

The Euro-bureaucrats are destroying every bit of national identity and individuality.

Let's face it: America is full of borderline, petty despots. They gravitate toward work as police officers, security gaurds, & supervisory bureaucrats like firemen, welfare case workers, and school principles.

Bryant wanted to be outside digging up corpses and chasing (as much as his bad leg would allow) unscrupulous but fiendishly brilliant villains through the back alleys of the city. Instead he was meeting a clerk about forgotten bits of paperwork.

Oh, and a huge Federal Building that looked like it was being molested by a giant steel pterodactyl, but evidently that was just the government trying to get away from their standard bomb shelter architecture to something more aesthetically appealing, especially if you liked Godzilla porn.

Hey, you ever feel like you might just be the construct of an unyielding, all-seeing bureaucracy beyond our perception that is molding humanity to its own will and pleasure?

This administrator of trade is the worst sort of bureaucrat. He abides by every rule, delights in making his own whenever it can inconvenience someone, and at the same time believes that he is doing good… I didn't think I would ever meet a noble who wasn't corrupt. Now that I have I find that I prefer them when they're greedy bastards. - Brom

Segmented, routinized, and depersonalized, the job of the bureaucrat or specialist—whether it involved confiscating property, scheduling trains, drafting legislation, sending telegrams, or compiling lists—could be performed without confronting the reality of mass murder.

Too much protocol.

Here, too, many would scold at the government, but for the opposite reason, that it couldn't keep its mind made up; it was composed of polite old gentlemen who couldn't bear to disturb things or to displease their subordinates, the bureaucrats, no matter what election results came in.

What's really terrifying is when you realize that bureaucracy isn't simply a growth on the body of the State. If it were only that, it could be cut off. No, bureaucracy is the very essence of the State.

Il peggio della burocrazia è quando in uno Stato operaio sono gli operai a soffrire».

And a free state that does not employ armies of unproductive snoops, spies, and politically correct commissars does not have its most daring and innovative minds crippled or its economy hobbled by costly hordes of unproductive trimmers.

In fact, a mere 535 elected senators and representatives can hardly become acquainted with, much less even read, some 175,496 pages of the Federal Register or monitor 2.7 million employees—without the enlistment of more bureaucrats to monitor bureaucrats.12

The War on Drugs employs millions - politicians, bureaucrats, policemen, and now the military - that probably couldn't find a place for their dubious talents in a free market, unless they were to sell pencils from a tin cup on street corners.

bureaucracy is trouble everybody has. It's a system evolved so that nobody in it is ever responsible for anything.

How many social workers does it take to change a light bulb? Thirteen. One to find the bulb, and the other twelve to hold a meeting to discuss how best to change it.

There have been several attempts at setting up electronic mail systems within the federal post office administration, but all have failed, not for technical reasons, but because the post office is resistant to change, as it is locked into a bureaucratic system in which patronage and civil-service job security are far more important than efficiency. Given that history, it seems to me more likely that electronic mail will come about through private rather than governmental action.

I cannot abide red tape. It never strangles bad ideas, only good ones.

The working of great administrations is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self-interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.