quotations about bureaucracy
Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof they were busy.
CHARLES PETERS
How Washington Really Works
The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy--a bureaucracy trained from early life to its special avocation--is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business. That art has not yet been condensed into precepts, but a great many experiments have been made, and a vast floating vapour of knowledge floats through society. One of the most sure principles is, that success depends on a due mixture of special and non-special minds--of minds which attend to the means, and of minds which attend to the end.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Recognition of the inevitability of comprehensive bureaucratization does not solve the problems that arise out of it.
JOSEPH A. SCHUMPETER
Capitalism
Bureaucracies force us to practice nonsense. And if you rehearse nonsense, you may one day find yourself the victim of it.
LAURENCE GONZALES
Everyday Survival
In every bureaucratic system the shifting of responsibilities is a matter of daily routine, and if one wishes to define bureaucracy in terms of political science, that is, as a form of government--the rule of offices, as contrasted to the rule of men, of one man, or of the few, or of the many--bureaucracy unhappily is the rule of nobody and for this very reason perhaps the least human and most cruel form of rulership.
HANNAH ARENDT
"Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship", Responsibility and Judgment
As specialists and bureaucrats, human beings become tools, able to make systems of exploitation and even terror function efficiently without the slightest sense of personal responsibility or understanding. They retreat into the arcane language of all specialists, to mask what they are doing and give to their work a sanitized, clinical veneer.
CHRIS HEDGES
"Our Mania for Hope Is a Curse", Truthdig, May 24, 2015
Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.
JAMES H. BOREN
When in Doubt, Mumble: A Bureaucrat's Handbook
Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.
P.D. JAMES
The Lighthouse
Willpower subverts passion. Bureaucracy subverts willpower. Idiocy subverts bureaucracy.
BAUVARD
Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic
It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence.
EDNA O'BRIEN
New York Times Book Review, February 14, 1993
The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink.
JOSEPH CONRAD
The Shadow-Line
The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.
JOHN STUART MILL
attributed, As It Is: An Ode to a Decade of Hidden Issues
However many people complain about the "red tape," it would be sheer illusion to think ... continuous administrative work can be carried out in any field except by means of officials working in offices.... The choice is only that between bureaucracy and dillettantism.
MAX WEBER
Economy and Society
Paperwork is the embalming fluid of bureaucracy, maintaining an appearance of life where none exists.
ROBERT MELTZER
attributed, Great Funny Quotes
A bureaucrat is a politician who has swapped his bunk for a berth.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
It's a poor bureaucrat who can't stall a good idea until even its sponsor is relieved to see it dead and officially buried.
ROBERT C. TOWNSEND
Up the Organization
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.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
HONORE DE BALZAC
attributed, The Harper Book of Quotations
The greatest power of bureaucracies is to make the smart act stupid and the good to act evil.
RAUL RAMOS Y SANCHEZ
Pancho Land
In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
JERRY POURNELLE
attributed, goodreads