Bureaucracy Quotes - Page 15

• Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in
  themselves.

  Erich Fromm

  Running, People, Suggestions

  Erich Fromm (2000). “The Art of Loving: The Centennial Edition”, p.119, A&C Black

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• Unquestionably, however, something else is at work, something that cuts deeper into the American psyche. We have a profound hatred of the weak and the poor, and a corresponding groveling terror before the rich and successful, and we're building a bureaucracy to match those feelings.

  Matt Taibbi

  Cutting, Successful, Profound

  Matt Taibbi (2014). “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap”, p.13, Spiegel & Grau

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• It's come around to that point of view at the end of a long evolutionary process, in which the rule of law has slowly been replaced by giant idiosyncratic bureaucracies that are designed to criminalize failure, poverty, and weakness on the one hand, and to immunize strength, wealth, and success on the other.

  Matt Taibbi

  Views, Hands, Law

  Matt Taibbi (2014). “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap”, p.14, Spiegel & Grau

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• I think what's happening with the veterans is a gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the health care provider. And if we can't get it right, with the relatively small number of veterans, how in the world are you going to do it with the entire population?

  Benjamin Carson

  Thinking, Numbers, Care

  "VA scandal 'a gift from God' because it showed Americans how bad Obamacare will be, conservative commentator Ben Carson says" by Francesca Chambers, www.dailymail.co.uk. May 25, 2014.

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• The bureaucracy has grown such powerful roots in Russia, and corruption is so widespread, that people from opposition have no interest in changing anything.

  Vladimir Sorokin

  Powerful, Russia, Roots

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Trapped in the bureaucracy nightmare, real families suffer when the big banks and their servicers force foreclosures. The emotional toll on children packing up their rooms and on parents struggling to find a temporary roof is a deep one.

  Sheldon Whitehouse

  Children, Real, Struggle

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• A cardinal rule of bureaucracy is that it is better to extend an error than to admit a mistake.

  Colin Greenwood

  Mistake, Errors, Cardinals

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• dealing with a counter clerk at the phone company who had all the customer service skills of a homicidal sociopath on work release.

  Jasmine Cresswell

  Phones, Skills, Clerks

  Jasmine Cresswell (2001). “The Conspiracy”, Mira Books

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• We need first of all the reform of our justice system. We need reform of the education system, because of quality of education because of innovation and technology. And we need administrative reform. Too much bureaucracy.

  Iveta Radicova

  Technology, Justice, Innovation

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• Sometimes I feel frustration at the bureaucracy for not moving fast enough to deliver in the way that I would prefer. But that is probably because I have worked for many years in the civil society, which tends to move much faster than government.

  Wangari Maathai

  Moving, Frustration, Government

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• [The Utopia of Rules] should offer a challenge to us all. Should we just accept this bureaucracy as inevitable? Or is there a way to get rid of all those hours spent listening to bad call-centre music? Do policemen, academics, teachers and doctors really need to spend half their time filling in forms? Or can we imagine another world?

  Gillian Tett

  Teacher, Doctors, Challenges

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• Britain has invented a new missile. It's called the civil servant - it doesn't work and it can't be fired.

  Walter Walker

  Benches, Britain, Servant

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• The Japanese bureaucracy is unique. It is also very powerful, although it is now the object of so much criticism. Many of Japans brightest made it a pillar of strength and continuity.

  F. Sionil José

  Powerful, Unique, Japan

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• In Stalin each [Soviet bureaucrat] easily finds himself. But Stalin also finds in each one a small part of his own spirit. Stalin is the personification of the bureaucracy. That is the substance of his political personality.

  Leon Trotsky

  Political, Personality, Substance

  "The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?"by Leon Trotsky, translated by Max Eastman, (ch. 11), 1936.

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• [University students] hated the hypocrisy of adult society, the rigidity of its political institutions, the impersonality of its bureaucracies. They sought to create a society that places human values before materialistic ones, that has a little less head and a little more heart, that is dominated by self-interest and loves its neighbor more. And they were persuaded that group protest of a militant nature would advance those goals.

  Muriel Beadle

  Heart, University Students, Self

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• I've been asked to explain why I don't worry much about the topics of privacy threat...One reason is that these scenarios seem to assume that there will be large, monolithic bureaucracies...that are capable of harnessing computers for one-way surveillance of an unsuspecting populace. I've come to feel that computation just doesn't work that way. Being afraid of monolithic organizations especially when they have computers, is like being afraid of really big gorillas especially when they are on fire.

  Bruce Sterling

  Fire, Organization, Worry

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• Institutions which have too much security ... tend to become bureaucratic. They add layers of people and layers of rules in order to assure the security of not making mistakes.

  Judith M Bardwick

  Mistake, Order, People

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• If conservatives come to control the White House and both Houses of Congress, there will be very little change in Hollywood, the network evening news, universities, church bureaucracies, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. Institutions that are overwhelmingly left-liberal will continue to misinform the public and distort public discourse.

  Robert Bork

  Christian, Religious, New York

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• The German passion for bureaucracy -- for written and signal forms . . . to move about, to work, to exist -- is like a steel pin pinning each French individual to a sheet of paper, the way an entomologist pins each specimen insect . . .

  Janet Flanner

  Moving, Passion, Steel

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• Bureaucracy is like a fungus that contaminates everything.

  Jaime Lerner

  Fungi, Government Bureaucracy

  "Quiet revolution". Interview with Tom Phillips, www.theguardian.com. March 26, 2008.

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• There is no justice in bureaucracy for the individual, for bureaucracy caters only to itself. One cannot practice the same bureaucracy as one is fighting against.

  Leon Trotsky

  Fighting, Practice, Justice

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• The basis of bureaucratic rule is the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all. When there is enough goods in a store, the purchasers can come whenever they want to. When there is little goods, the purchasers are compelled to stand in line. When the lines are very long, it is necessary to appoint a policeman to keep order. Such is the starting point of the power of the Soviet bureaucracy. It "knows" who is to get something and who has to wait.

  Leon Trotsky

  Struggle, Order, Long

  Leon Trotsky, (2013). “The Revolution Betrayed”, p.88, Read Books Ltd

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• I think that for anybody who has worked in the civil society, government bureaucracy moves very very slowly.

  Wangari Maathai

  Moving, Thinking, Government

  "'I Will Disappear Into the Forest': An Interview With Wangari Maathai". Interview With Dave Gilson, www.motherjones.com. January 5, 2005.

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• The monstrosity of bureaucracy, I thought: always the pint-pot judging the gallon, the scribe's, the door-keeper's world. Always the stupidity of people who feel certain about things they never try to find out. A world that educates people to be ignorant - that is what this world of ours is.

  Freya Stark

  Doors, Judging, People

  Freya Stark (1964). “The Journey's Echo: Selections”

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• If we overregulate, over control, impose too many burdens and too much bureaucracy - or if we do it across the board, without taking into account the differences among businesses and their relative impact on society - that could make people risk-averse and dampen the entrepreneurial spirit.

  Samuel J. Palmisano

  Impact, Differences, People

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