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Bureaucracy Quotes

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Bureaucracy Quotes

“A totally nondenominational prayer: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that I be forgiven for anything I may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness.  Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which I may be eligible after the destruction of my body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.”

HumorFunnyReligionPrayerMythologyAgnosticBureaucracyAgnosticismParody
Book:Creatures of Light and Darkness
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“She was back. Even so, Will didn't move. He would wait her out, fake-relaxing in the uncomfortable chair with his head not against the wall, tapping his hands to Bureaucratic Barbara's brainwashing beat as an act of solidarity with every other man she'd tried to enervate with her bell and refusal to offer change. [inner dialog of Will Phillips]”

StrengthIdentityCourtSolidarityManhoodBureaucracyTransSubversionDissidentAdjuster
Book:Adjustments
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“Processes of rationalization and disenchantment engender a shift from a social order founded upon value-rational beliefs and governed through charismatic and traditional forms of authority, to an order ruled by the force of instrumental reason and dominated by new forms of institutional bureaucracy. This movement results in the depersonalization of the social world: instrumental calculation steadily suppresses the passionate pursuit of ultimate values, and bureaucracy reduces the scope for individual initiative and personal fulfillment... instrumental reason... is not only tied to the devaluation or disenchantment of the highest and most sublime values and ideals, but places important limits on the scope for individual autonomy and freedom in the modern world.”

ReligionFreedomIndividualityBureaucracy
Book:Max Weber and Postmodern Theory: Rationalisation Versus Re-enchantment
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“In a world where change is constant and uninterrupted, believing that the centralized planning of scientists, politicians and state bureaucrats is more efficient than the spontaneous order of human cooperation, in the search for solutions to disease, climate change and the end of poverty, is so intensely naive that even the purity of a child will seem wiser.”

FreedomPovertyClimate ChangeBureaucracyStatismHuman ActionHuman Cooperation
Author:Prof. Vinícius Montgomery de Miranda
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“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern." [From the Preface]”

EvilHellManagementAdministrationCorporationsDictatorshipEfficiencyBureaucracyBig BusinessPolice StateCorporatocracy
Book:The Screwtape Letters
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“The greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one could argue, to whom one could present grievances, on whom the pressures of power could be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.”

GovernmentEvilFreedomLibertyLibertarianSocialismCommunismAnarchyBureaucracyTaxationTheftStateStatismVoluntaryismTotalitarianMinarchy
Author:Hannah Arendt
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“what passed for useful information sharing within an organization was really just bureaucratic phatic of people protecting their position, looking for praise, projecting criticism, setting up positions of non-responsibility for upcoming failures and calamities, that were both entirely predictable, but seemingly completely unavoidable and telling each other what they all already knew. The trick was to be able to reengage quickly and seamlessly without allowing anyone to know that you stopped listening properly, shortly after the speaker had first opened their mouth.”

QuotesWorkOrganizationBureaucracyBanksCulture QuotesThe CultureIain M BanksSurface Detail
Book:Surface Detail
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“Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the High Court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one of the men closed round his throat, just as the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it twice.”

JusticeLogicCourtIrrationalBureaucracySenseJudgeTrialTotalitarianAbsence Of Values
Book:The Trial
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“Civilizations are born from the marriage of bureaucracy and mythology. The computer-based network is a new type of bureaucracy that is far more powerful and relentless than any human-based bureaucracy we’ve seen before. This network is also likely to create inter-computer mythologies that will be far more complex and alien than any human-made god. The potential benefits of this network are enormous. The potential downside is the destruction of human civilization.”

HumanityInformationCivilizationMythologyAiBureaucracyNetwork
Book:Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
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“I give a call today to the civil servants around the world - yours is to serve, not the government, not the politicians, not even the constitution, but the people. You are the first servants of the society. On your shoulders, lies the responsibility of humanity's present and future. If the armed forces are our last line of defense in any corner of the world, then you are our first line of defense in every corner of the world. Injustice must ask your permission before entering the lives of the people. You, civil servants are the first vanguards of the society.”

GovernmentJusticeInspiringAdministrationBureaucracyPublic ServicePublic ServantsCivil ServantsCivil Service
Book:When Humans Unite: Making A World Without Borders
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“Wananchi wanapokosa huduma za muhimu za kijamii (kama vile afya, elimu, chakula, malazi, na ulinzi) ilhali wanalipa kodi, na wameajiri serikali kuwaendeshea nchi kwa kiapo cha uaminifu wa vitabu vitakatifu, watakosa imani na serikali yao! Vilevile wataathirika kiuchumi, kijamii na kisiasa, na vita itaweza kutokea kati ya wananchi na serikali, au wananchi kwa wananchi wataweza hata kujidhuru wenyewe – nikimaanisha vita ya wenyewe kwa wenyewe. Serikali ikifuata maadili ya kazi, na kuacha udikteta na urasimu wa aina yoyote ile, au ikifanya kazi kulingana na misingi ya katiba ya nchi; wananchi watapata huduma za kijamii kama wanavyostahili, na ndoto ya haki na ustawi wa jamii itaweza kutimia. Hata hivyo, serikali inaweza kuwadhulumu wananchi wake kwa sababu ya usalama wao.”

PeopleWarCountryDreamGovernmentPoliticsEducationEconomySocietySecurityDangerousFoodCitizensEthicsConstitutionEqualityOppressionHealth CareCivil WarDictatorshipShelterBureaucracyAllegianceOathGovernment AbuseBasic NeedsLionSocial WelfareTax
Author:Enock Maregesi
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“The Communist revolution, conducted in the name of doing away with classes, has resulted in the most complete authority of any single new class ... The new class is voracious and insatiable, just as the bourgeoisie was. But it does not have the virtues of frugality and economy that the bourgeoisie had. The new class is as exclusive as the aristocracy but without aristocracy's refinement and proud chivalry ... The totalitarian tyranny and control of the new class, which came into being during the revolution, has become the yoke from under which the blood and sweat of all members of society flow.”

ClassRevolutionCommunismBureaucracyTotalitarian
Book:The New Class: An Analysis Of The Communist System
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“...sometimes we see things in animals that aren't really there. It's called transference, if that makes any sense. ...I think there are a lot of people who say they do things for animals when they're really doing it for themselves. They see things in animals that might not really be there. I think sometimes that hurts the animals in the end, and it hurts other people, too. ...There are people on both sides of the issue who think animals are more valuable than people are...”

Common SenseEcologyBureaucracyEnvironmental ProtectionTransferenceEndangered Animals
Book:Open Season
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“The most profound legacy of the dominance of bureaucratic forms of organization over the last two hundred years is that it has made this intuitive division between rational, technical means and the ultimately irrational ends to which they are put seem like common sense.”

Common SenseBureaucracy
Book:The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
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“The petite bourgeoise and small property in general represent a precious zone of autonomy and freedom in state systems increasingly dominated by large public and private bureaucracies.”

LifeWorkFreedomCapitalismBureaucracyAutonomyPrivate SectorTrade UnionsPublic SectorPetite Bourgeoise
Book:Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity and Meaningful Work and Play
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“But who would build the roads if there were no government? You mean to tell me that 300 million people in this country and 7 billion people on the planet would just sit around in their houses and think “Gee, I’d like to go visit Fred, but I can't because there isn’t a flat thing outside for me to drive on, and I don’t know how to build it and the other 300 million or 7 billion people can’t possibly do it because there aren’t any politicians and tax collectors. If they were here then we could do it. If they were here to boss us around and steal our money and really inefficiently build the flat places, then we would be set. Then I would be comfortable and confident that I could get places. But I can’t go to Fred’s house or the market because we can’t possibly build a flat space from A to B. We can make these really small devices that enable us to contact people from all over the word that fits in our pockets; we can make machines that we drive around in, but no, we can’t possibly build a flat space.”

GovernmentFreedomLibertyTechnologySlaveryLibertarianSocialismAnarchyBureaucracyTaxationTheftUtopiaCoercionStatismVoluntaryismLaissez FaireRoadsAustrian School Of Economics
Author:Larken Rose
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“Nelle nostre società industriali noi consideriamo come popolazione attiva la popolazione nel gruppo di età 15-64. Anche questa è una definizione abbastanza arbitraria, derivante dal duplice fatto che a) in molti Paesi l’obbligo scolastico per i giovani si estende fino al quindicesimo compleanno, e che b) il sessantacinquesimo compleanno è per molte professioni il limite di pensionabilità. In realtà però ci sono individui che cominciano a lavorare molto dopo aver compiuto i 15 anni d’età e altri che cominciano prima. C’è gente che va in pensione prima di aver compiuto il sessantacinquesimo anno e c’è gente che lavora ancora a settant’anni. C’è gente che non ha mai lavorato e ci sono casi come quello della burocrazia italiana la quale rappresenta un campionario pittoresco di gente che si trova nel gruppo d’età 15-65 e prende regolarmente uno stipendio, ma la cui aggregazione alla «popolazione attiva» è frutto di una rosea violenza fatta dalla statistica alla realtà.”

AgeWorkBureaucracyItalyCivil Servants
Book:Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000-1700
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“Nobody can plan the actions of even a thousand living persons, separately. Anyone attempting to control millions must divide them into classes, and make a plan applying to these classes. But these classes do not exist. No two persons are alike. No two are in the same circumstances; no two have the same abilities; beyond getting the barest necessities of life, no two have the same desires. Therefore the men who try to enforce, in real life, a planned economy that is their theory, come up against the infinite diversity of human beings. The most slavish multitude of men that was ever called "demos" or "labor" or "capital" or "agriculture" or "the masses," actually are men; they are not sheep. Naturally, by their human nature, they escape in all directions from regulations applying to non-existent classes. It is necessary to increase the number of men who supervise their actions. Then (for officials are human, too) it is necessary that more men supervise the supervisors. Still, individuals will continue to act individually, in ways that they plan. These ways do not fit into Authority's plan. So still more men are needed, imperatively needed, to stop or to supervise these new ways of acting; and more men to supervise these supervisors; and more men to co-ordinate the constantly increasing complexity of all this supervision. An attempt to exercise a control of individuals that in reality does not exist, must increase in volume.”

GovernmentFreedomGroupsCircumstancesControlBureaucracyImpossibilitySupervisionIndividuals
Author:Rose Wilder Lane
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“When society is organised from above, either by the top-down government of a revolutionary dictatorship, or by the impersonal edicts of an inscrutable bureaucracy, then accountability rapidly disappears from the political order, and from society, too. Top-down government breeds irresponsible individuals, and the confiscation of civil society by the state leads to a widespread refusal among the citizens to act for themselves.”

GovernmentSocietyBureaucracyCivil SocietyPolitical Order
Book:Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition
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“Epic art is founded on action, and the model of a society in which action could play out in greatest freedom was that of the heroic Greek period; so said Hegel, and he demonstrated it with The Iliad: even though Agamemnon was the prime king, other kings and princes chose freely to join him and, like Achilles, they were free to withdraw from the battle. Similarly the people joined with their princes of their own free will; there was no law that could force them; behavior was determined only by personal motives, the sense of honor, respect, humility before a more powerful figure, fascination with a hero's courage, and so on. The freedom to participate in the struggle and the freedom to desert it guaranteed every man his independence. In this way did action retain a personal quality and thus its poetic form. Against this archaic world, the cradle of the epic, Hegel contrasts the society of his own period: organized into the state, equipped with a constitution, laws, a justice system, an omnipotent administration, ministries, a police force, and so on. The society imposes its moral principles on the individual, whose behavior is thus determined by far more anonymous wishes coming from the outside than by his own personality. And it is in such a world that the novel was born.”

ActionAncientBureaucracyGreeceStatismDoingHegelIliadHomerClassical
Book:The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts
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“Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited success to help the reduced forces of Czech dissent to stay nourished (and published). The most pregnant moment of that commitment was one that I managed to miss at the time: I passed an afternoon with Zdenek Mlynar, exiled former secretary of the Czech Communist Party, who in the bleak early 1950s in Moscow had formed a friendship with a young Russian militant with an evident sense of irony named Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev. In 1988 I was arrested in Prague for attending a meeting of one of Vaclav Havel's 'Charter 77' committees. That outwardly exciting experience was interesting precisely because of its almost Zen-like tedium. I had gone to Prague determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of the name Franz Kafka, but the numbing bureaucracy got the better of me. When I asked why I was being detained, I was told that I had no need to know the reason! Totalitarianism is itself a cliché (as well as a tundra of pulverizing boredom) and it forced the cliché upon me in turn. I did have to mention Kafka in my eventual story. The regime fell not very much later, as I had slightly foreseen in that same piece that it would. (I had happened to notice that the young Czechs arrested with us were not at all frightened by the police, as their older mentors had been and still were, and also that the police themselves were almost fatigued by their job. This was totalitarianism practically yawning itself to death.) A couple of years after that I was overcome to be invited to an official reception in Prague, to thank those who had been consistent friends through the stultifying years of what 'The Party' had so perfectly termed 'normalization.' As with my tiny moment with Nelson Mandela, a whole historic stretch of nothingness and depression, combined with the long and deep insult of having to be pushed around by boring and mediocre people, could be at least partially canceled and annealed by one flash of humor and charm and generosity.”

PoliticsHistoryHumourCommitmentPoliceLoyaltyRussiaCommunismGenerosityIronyBoredomCharmMediocrityBureaucracyExileDissentTotalitarianismAllegianceMoscowArgumentsDetention1968KafkaGorbachevCzechoslovakiaArrestNelson MandelaPrague1950s1970s1980sCliches1988Vaclav HavelBad CrowdsCharter 77Zdenek Mlynar
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“In the developed industrial countries, all social institutions for the purpose of evening out inequalities and ensuring a minimum of security (progressive taxation, health services, unemployment relief, price controls, etc.) have been created and extended at the price of a vastly expanded state bureaucracy, and no one can suggest how to avoid paying this price.”

InequalityBureaucracy
Book:Main Currents Of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown
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“At this point I realised what it meant to be a man in India. It meant knowing what one could do and knowing what one could only get done. It meant being able to hold onto two patterns simultaneously. One was methodical, hierarchical, regulated and the outcome depended on fate, chance, kings and desperate men. The other was intuitive, illicit and guaranteed. The trick was to know when to shift between the patterns, to peel the file off a table and give it to a peon, to speak easily of one's cousin the minister or archbishop. I did not think I would ever know what these shifts entailed, and that meant, in essence, that I was never going to grow up.”

AgePoliticsCorruptionBureaucracyBriberyGrow Up
Book:Em and the Big Hoom
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“Vast organisations produce a sense of impotence in the individual, leading to a decay of effort. The danger can be averted if it is realised by administrators, but it is of a kind which most administrators are constitutionally incapable of realising. Into every tidy scheme for arranging the pattern of human life it is necessary to inject a certain dose of anarchism, enough to prevent immobility leading to decay, but not enough to bring about disruption.”

EffortAdministrationDecayBureaucracyAnarchismDisruptionDynamismOrganizationsOrganizational DesignAnti Individualism
Book:Sceptical Essays
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“The only problem that ever really seems to bother empire builders is bureaucracy. Before a new colony on the frontier could be founded, the Senate and Triumvirate would have to pass the plan. Factors influencing the High Lords decision would include, among others, the number of people needed to found the colony and whether this would result in any significant population shift. Another, more critical factor would be whether Tactical Defense could spare the ships or the manpower to patrol the area.”

PeopleSeemsCriticalDefenseSignificantFactorsBureaucracyPlanOthersTheMoreToAndOfTacticalShiftBeforeWouldAreaManpowerAnyCouldAnotherWhetherIncludeInfluencingBe FoundedTriumvirate
Book:Space Sucks!
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“Quasi avesse tenuto una breve rappresentazione teatrale, l'avvocato si mette una mano sul cuore e si inchina. Poi apre la porta a due battenti e dice: Permettono? a indicare che il colloquio è finito. Richard sa benissimo anche lui che fuori sono in attesa molti rumeni, vietnamiti e africani. Passando con Ithemba davanti al guardaroba e vedendo un cilindro sulla mensola per cappelli, gli viene quasi il dubbio che questo avvocato dalle sembianze di un gufo sia arrivato in volo, dal lontano Ottocento, direttamente nel ventunesimo secolo – in questo secolo nuovo e tuttavia così vecchio, con i suoi interminabili flussi di esseri umani che, dopo essere sopravvissuti alla traversata in un mare vero, rischiano ora di affogare nei fiumi e nei mari di carte.”

BureaucracyImpotenceHuman Migration
Author:Jenny Erpenbeck
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“That’s how we’ve ended up,” Ivan said with a bitter smile. “We work, as in the proverb: Enough trading, father — there’s no change left to give. ‘Why did they suddenly increase the grain procurement plan?’ Vasyl protested. ‘Everything seems the same — but it isn’t,’ Danylo explained. ‘The status of our land has changed, and so has the status of the collective farmers. What grew last year is now taxed differently. Even the poor peasants who joined the collective are no longer considered poor — and the taxes rise accordingly.’ ‘Clever,’ Ivan muttered angrily. ‘They’ve laid out their accounting traps well.’ — Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Two Context note: In Soviet collective farms, taxes and grain quotas were often increased not because of real agricultural growth, but due to bureaucratic reclassification. Accounting became a tool of pressure that made normal farming impossible.”

InjusticeBureaucracyFarmingPeasantsUkraine1930sSoviet HistoryCollectivizationState TerrorFarming Economy
Book:Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга друга. Непрості дороги до пекла: Виживання в умовах насильства.
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“Marx and Engels, in their giddy enthusiasm for the industrial revolutions of their day, [...] were wrong to predict that market competition would compel factory owners to-go on with mechanization anyway. If it didn't happen, it can only be because market competition is not, in fact, as essential to the nature of capitalism as they had assumed. If nothing else, the current form of capitalism, where much of the competition seems to take the form of internal marketing within the bureaucratic structures of large semi-monopolistic enterprises, would presumably have come as a complete surprise to them.”

CapitalismBureaucracyMarketMarxEngelsBureaucratic SocietyManagerialismMarket Competition
Book:The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
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“Just three words? Nothing about his physical health? His equipment? His supplies?' 'You got me,' she said. 'He left a detailed status report. I just decided to lie for no reason.' 'Funny,' Venkat said. 'Be a smart-ass to a guy seven levels above you at your company. See how that works out.' 'Oh no,' Mindy said. 'I might lose my job as an interplanetary voyeur? I guess I'd have to use my master's degree for something else.' 'I remember when you were shy.' 'I'm space paparazzi now. The attitude comes with the job.”

SarcasmBureaucracyPaparazziSmart AssSmart Ass CommentsSpace Paparazzi
Book:The Martian
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