Quotessence
Home / Topics / Bureaucracy Quotes

Bureaucracy Quotes

Browse 552 quotes about Bureaucracy.

Related topics

GovernmentGovernment BureaucracyPeopleBureaucratsIfsStatesNeedsThinkingPoliticalWayCountryMenBigsProblemWorldIndividualJobsKnowsShouldFormImportantKindRedTaxesTodayBelieveDoeGivingHumansOfficialsPoliticsTryingWholeForceInterestMeanRed TapeTapeWellsCareChildrenDecisionDemocracyLawLibertarianLibertyLittlesPoliticianPresidentPurposeSelfToo MuchUnionsWantAgencyCitizensCongressCuttingDifferentFactsFirstsHealth CareInnovationLongPersonsRealReasonRunningSocialDealsEconomyFightingGiantsHelpingInitiativeLooksMovingOfficeOrganizationPaperPositionProcessRebelliousSaidServantSizeSolutionsSometimesStillsSupportWar

Bureaucracy Quotes

“It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.”

PeopleDoeStatesReasonSupportMilitaryDutyConscienceNotesKillingRefuseActiveCuriousBureaucracyExemption
Author:Karl Hess
Create image

“The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.”

MediaStyleWindWeaponsMassDestructionOrganizationWaveProductionsEntertainmentConcentrationConsumptionBureaucracyDistributionWeapons Of Mass DestructionMass DestructionRecreationMass MediaCentralizationMass ProductionStandardizationMass Consumption
Author:Alvin Toffler
Create image

“[I]t's up to Republicans to expose the bureaucracies and criticize the orthodoxies - to ask why visas for travel to the United States are still being issued in West Africa and why American military forces are being deployed there without a workable plan or intelligible purpose, why CDC spending priorities are so skewed and CDC management so weak, and why here at home routine police powers aren't being used and routine public health measures aren't being implemented.”

StillsStatesHomeUsedPurposeAsksForceUnitedUnited StatesPlansMilitaryRepublicanWeakPoliceManagementWestSpendingPrioritiesCriticizeRoutineBureaucracyOrthodoxyNotablePublic HealthVisaMilitary ForceAmerican MilitaryWest AfricaPolice Power
Author:William Kristol
Create image

“I imagine a school system that recognizes learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers...creativity above fact regurgitation...individuality above conformity.. and excellence above standardized performance..... And we must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.”

RealFactsSchoolValuesNaturalAnswersCreativityImagineNormalStandardsPerformancesExcellenceNotionIndividualityPassionateReformRejectsConformityBureaucracyTestingCurriculumUniformitySchool SystemUnschoolingLove Of LearningSchool Curriculum
Author:Tom Peters
Create image

“There is no reason to believe that the people who staff the managerial and professional positions in our service institutions are any less qualified, any less competent or honest, or any less hard-working than the men who manage businesses. Conversely, there is no reason to believe that business managers, put in control of service institutions, would do better than the 'bureaucrats'. Indeed, we know that they immediately become bureaucrats themselves.”

PeopleKnowsMenBelieveHardReasonHonestPositionHe ManHard WorkInstitutionsManageManagersNo ReasonStaffBureaucracyQualifiedCompetentBureaucrats
Author:Peter Drucker
Create image

“An institution which is financed by a budget - or which enjoys a monopoly which the customer cannot escape - is rewarded for what it deserves rather than what it earns. It is paid for 'good intentions' and 'programs'. It is paid for not alienating important constituents rather than satisfying any one group. It is misdirected by the way it is being paid into defining performance and results as what will produce the budget rather than as what will produce contribution.”

WayImportantEnjoyResultsGroupsProduceDeserveProgramPerformancesPaidInstitutionsIntentionCustomersBudgetsContributionSatisfyingBureaucracyMonopolyDefiningGood IntentionsConstituents
Author:Peter Drucker
Create image

“If the DHS insists, as bureaucracies are apt to do, that open-source must be certified via a sanctioned, formal process, it will interfere with the informal process of open-source itself. It seems to me the DHS is trying to turn an open-source development project into a Microsoft (or IBM or Oracle) software development project. And we know what that means: more, not fewer, errors -- security and otherwise.”

IfsKnowsTryingMeanSeemsTurnsProcessSecuritySourceDevelopmentProjectsErrorsSoftwareFewerInterfereFormalBureaucracyMicrosoftOraclesIbmOpen SourceSoftware Development
Author:Mark Hall
Create image

“Innovation is the lifeblood of an organization. Knowing how to lead and work with creative people requires knowledge and action that often goes against the typical organizational structure. Protect unusual people from bureaucracy and legalism typical of organizations.”

PeopleActionCreativeKnowingProtectOrganizationInnovationStructureUnusualTypicalBureaucracyCreative PeopleOrganizationalLegalismOrganizational StructureKnowledge And Action
Author:Max De Pree
Create image

“The tax that was supposed to soak the rich has instead soaked America. The beneficiary of the income tax has not been the poor, but big government. The income tax has given us a government bureaucracy that outnumbers the manufacturing work force. It has created welfare dependencies that have entrapped millions of Americans in an underclass that is forced to live a sordid existence of trading votes for government handouts.”

BigsGovernmentAmericaGivenForcePoorExistenceMillionsRichTaxesVoteIncomeWelfareBureaucracyTradingManufacturingIncome TaxDependencyBig GovernmentBeneficiariesHandoutsGovernment Bureaucracy
Author:Paul Craig Roberts
Create image

“The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity — a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.”

Has BeensSaidFallCenturyMovementHundredCuriosityFactorsGentlemanRisingEmpiresMassiveInitiativeBureaucracyMajesticCastesFreezing
Book:Foundation Trilogy
Create image

“The main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. This means stepping out of ego's constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort, or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking. One must step out of spiritual materialism.”

MeanSpiritualDesireStepsPracticeVirtueParticularHigherComfortEgoJudgmentConstantSeekingVersionsMaterialismBureaucracyTranscendentalSpiritual Practice
Book:The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism; The Myth of Freedom; The Heart of the Bud dha; Selected Writings
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingWellsArtGovernmentEnergyQualityPrinciplesMankindDutyTruth IsMembersAppearanceOfficialsQuantityBureaucracyBoastRebelliousInconsistentGovernment Bureaucracy
Book:The English Constitution
Create image

“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.”

WorldHumansSeemsEarthNumbersCivilizationLimitsTaxesPaperEnvironmentalPopulationLawyerFarmersNurseSustainabilityCollapseBureaucracyExceedEcologicalHuman CivilizationWeavers
Book:WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
Create image

“Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shootings of hostages, etc.”

DiesFallEnergyCausesPartyLeaderOpinionStruggleConditionsElementsDirectElectionInstitutionsRemainsPressesMereActiveTyrannyShootingEtcDozenBureaucracyRebelliousAssemblyBoundlessPublic LifeAssassinationHostageFreedom Of The PressSemblanceGeneral Elections
Book:The Russian Revolution, and Leninism Or Marxism?
Create image

“Despite the campaign rhetoric, the bureaucracies-big business and big government-are here to stay. The centralization effort cannot be checked. but it can be rationally directed towards our species goal: Space Migration, which in turn offers the only way to re-attain individual freedom of space-time and the small-group social structures which obviously best suit our nervous systems. It is another paradox of neuro-genetics that only in space habitats can humanity return to the village life and pastoral style for which we all long.”

WayLongBigsGovernmentHumanityTurnsIndividualSocialGoalSpaceEffortGroupsStyleReturnWalkingOffersMoonStructureSpeciesCampaignsDespiteNervousSuitsParadoxVillageRhetoricBureaucracyGeneticsMigrationNervous SystemStar GazingBig BusinessBig GovernmentSmall GroupsHabitatIndividual FreedomSpace TimeSocial StructureCentralizationVillage Life
Book:Neuropolitique
Create image