Bureaucracy Quotes - Page 14

• [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.

  William Kristol

  Military, Home, Priorities

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• When you start separating people from their rivers, what have you got? Bureaucracy!

  Jack Kerouac

  Rivers, People, Separating

  Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.231, Penguin

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• As we all learned from the sorry experience of state-sanctioned bureaucracies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, decentralization in education is crucial to both freedom and excellence.

  Jerry Brown

  Sorry, Europe, Excellence

  "Jerry Brown Blasts Teacher Unionization Bill / Charter schools' self-determination at stake, he says" by Rick DelVecchio, www.sfgate.com. May 22, 1999.

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• Communism is what happens when atheism meets bureaucracy.

  Theodore Beale

  Atheist, Atheism, Communism

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• This thought-provoking novel portrays the absurdity of our overbearing government bureaucracy with a story that is entertaining and fast-paced. The Taxman Cometh will become part of our national dialogue about taxes and freedom. And it’s funny as hell. Author Jim Greenfield is a cross between Ayn Rand and Monty Python. If enough people read this hilarious ‘man versus state’ book, the IRS will be put out of business, which is okay with me.

  Grover Norquist

  Book, Men, Python

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• No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from local self-government. No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Government, Self, Liberty

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• The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Art, Government, Idols

  Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Idolatry"

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• To achieve peace, it is crucial to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy that prevents peace processes from advancing.

  Widad Akrawi

  Unnecessary, Achieve, Process

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• Bureaucracy, the rule of nobody.

  Hannah Arendt

  The Human Condition ch. 6 (1958)

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• 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.

  Alvin Toffler

  Wind, Organization, Mass Destruction

  "Future Speak". Interview with Scott S. Smith, www.entrepreneur.com. March 1, 1999.

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• I am for joining a free trade zone. The European Union is not such zone, but a zone of raging bureaucracy which stears every hectolitre of wine, and every tone of beef.

  Janusz Korwin-Mikke

  Wine, Trade Zone, Joining

  Blog, April 29, 2009.

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• The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them. And one can debate long and profitably on the rule of Nobody, which is what the political form known as bureau-cracy truly is….we have become very much accustomed by modern psychology and sociology, not to speak of modern bureaucracy, to explaining away the responsibility of the doer for his deed in terms of this or that kind of determinism.

  Hannah Arendt

  Responsibility, Men, Essence

  "The Origins of Totalitarianism". Book by Hannah Arendt, progressive.org. 1951.

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• Rethink every aspect of bureaucracy.

  Newt Gingrich

  Aspect

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• 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.

  Tom Peters

  Real, Creativity, School

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• Australia is, in fact, an old man's bureaucracy.

  Robin Boyd

  Men, Australia, Facts

  Robin Boyd, Australian Broadcasting Commission (1967). “Artificial Australia”

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• The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is its inefficiency.

  Eugene McCarthy

  Liberty, Politics, Libertarian

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• I love a novel that’s funny, and The Taxman Cometh is very funny, delightfully well-written, yet with a serious message about how government bureaucracy affects us all. Read. Enjoy. And if a comparison to Catch 22 pops into your mind, that’s not surprising.

  Marvin Kalb

  Government, Mind, Messages

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• Socialism would gather all power to
  the supreme party and party leaders,
  rising like stately pinnacles
  above their vast bureaucracies of
  civil servants no longer servants, no longer civil.

  Winston Churchill

  Party, Leader, Rising

  Sir Winston Churchill (1966). “Irrepressible Churchill: a treasury of Winston Churchill's wit”

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• 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.

  Peter Drucker

  Believe, Hard Work, Men

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• Self-interest speaks all manner of tongues and plays all manner of parts, even that of disinterestedness.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Self, Play, Tongue

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• By the time the civil service has finished drafting a document to give effect to the principle, there may be little of the principle left.

  John Reith, 1st Baron Reith

  Giving, Principles, May

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• The bureaucracy takes itself to be the ultimate purpose of the state

  Karl Marx

  Purpose, States, Ultimate

  Karl Marx (1975). “Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Marx and Engels: 1843-44”

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• We say that word [bureaucracy] with such contempt. But it's that contempt that keeps this thing that we own and we pay for as something that's working against us.

  Jennifer Pahlka

  Pay, Contempt

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• The greatest challenge to organizations is the balance between continuity and change. You need both. At different times, the balance is slightly more over here, or slightly more over there, but you need both. And balance is basically the greatest task in leadership. Organizations have to have continuity, and yet if there is not enough new challenge, not enough change, they become empty bureaucracies, awfully fast.

  Peter Drucker

  Business, Organization, Challenges

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• Well, who is more likely to volunteer to take a job in a bureaucracy that has little to recommend it except that it gives you the power to use government force to control the lives of others? A dispassionate scientist or a zealot? In government, the zealots eventually take over.

  John Stossel

  Jobs, Government, Giving

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