BUREAUCRACY

Quote: I always get back to the question, is it really necessary that men should consume so much of their bodily and mental energies in the machinery of civilized life? The world seems to me to do much of its toil for that which is not in any sense bread. Again, does not the latent feeling that much of their striving is to no purpose tend to infuse large quantities of sham into men's work?''

Author: William Allingham 1824-1889, Poet


Quote: A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.

Author: Walter Bagehot 1826-1877, British Economist, Critic


Quote: A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office a Republican wants.

Author: Alben W. Barkley 1877-1956, American Politician


Quote: In the US we find the label requirements are crazy. It is almost as if we had to label a bookcase with the warning 'do not eat this bookcase -- it can be harmful to your health'.

Author: Bjorn Bayley Business Executive, President of Ikea US


Quote: Poor fellow, he suffers from files.

Author: Aneurin Bevan 1897-1960, British Labor Politician


Quote: Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public Records to be true.

Author: William Blake 1757-1827, British Poet, Painter


Quote: Those who can, do, those who can't teach; and those who can do neither, administer.

Author: Calvin Calverley


Quote: A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, ''Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state.''

Author: Marquis De Custine 1790-1857, French Traveler, Author


Quote: If the copying machines that came along later had been here during the war, I'm not sure the allies would have won. We'd all have drowned in paper.

Author: Alan Dickey American World War II Pentagon Architect


Quote: It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the earth can sustain, and that human civilization will collapse when the number of, say, tax lawyers exceeds the world's total population of farmers, weavers, fisherpersons, and pediatric nurses.

Author: Barbara Ehrenreich 1941-, American Author, Columnist


Quote: The inventor of the Xerox machine will, I am sure, find a special place reserved for him on one of the inner circles of Dante's Inferno.

Author: Nicholas Goodison British Business Executive, Chairman of London Stock Exchange


Quote: Endless meetings, sloppy communications and red tape steal the entrepreneur's time.

Author: James L. Hayes American Businessman, President, American Management Association


Quote: Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.

Author: Aldous Huxley 1894-1963, British Author


Quote: A bureaucrat is a person who cuts red tape sideways.

Author: J. Mccabe


Quote: The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

Author: Eugene J. Mccarthy 1916-, American Politician


Quote: Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

Author: Mary Mccarthy 1912-1989, American Author, Critic


Quote: The longer the title, the less important the job.

Author: George Mcgovern 1922-, American Democratic Politician


Quote: The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.

Author: John Stuart Mill 1806-1873, British Philosopher, Economist


Quote: So many signatures for such a small heart.

Author: Mother Teresa 1910-1997, Albanian-born Roman Catholic Missionary


Quote: Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.

Author: P. J. O'Rourke 1947-, American Journalist


Quote: If we did not have such a thing as an airplane today, we would probably create something the size of N.A.S.A. to make one.

Author: H. Ross Perot 1930-, American Businessman & Politician, Founder EDS


Quote: 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!

Author: Ronald Reagan 1911-, Fortieth President of the USA, Actor


Quote: If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy; God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won t.

Author: Hyman G. Rickover 1900-1986, Naval Engineering Officer


Quote: Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.

Author: Joseph A. Schumpeter 1883-1950, Austrian-American Economist


Quote: The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.

Author: Sitting Bull 1834-1890, American Indian Warrior and chief of the Dakota Sioux


Quote: Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses.

Author: Source Unknown


Quote: There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.

Author: Gore Vidal 1925-, American Novelist, Critic