Bureaucrats Quotes - Page 4

• People change their opinion according to your position. And both politicians and bureaucrats begin to take you more seriously, as they suddenly feel you have become more important

  Rajeev Shukla

  Change, People, Important

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• I did attempt to find out if there were any secret government documents that revealed things. If there were, they were concealed from me too. And if there were, well I wouldn't be the first American president that underlings have lied to, or that career bureaucrats have waited out. But there may be some career person sitting around somewhere, hiding these dark secrets, even from elected presidents. But if so, they successfully eluded me...and I'm almost embarrassed to tell you I did (chuckling) try to find out.

  William J. Clinton

  Dark, Government, Careers

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• Washington bureaucrats have classified the very air we exhale as a pollutant and have gone unchallenged in this incredible assertion. The logical consequence is that there will come a time when we will have to buy a government permit just to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from our own lungs!

  Ron Paul

  Government, Air, Atmosphere

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• To err is human, but to really screw things up requires a design committee of bureaucrats.

  Henry Spencer

  Design, Politics, Committees

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• There is nothing quite so depressing as waking up to face a day when you know that you are going to have to deal with a government office or bureaucrat.

  Neal Boortz

  Depressing, Government, Office

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• The rich have markets, the poor have bureaucrats.

  William Easterly

  Rich, Poor

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• The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Men, Liberty

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• Government means politics, and interference by government carries with it always the implication of coercion. We may accept the expanding power of bureaucrats so long as we bask in their friendly smile. But it is a dangerous temptation. Today politics may be our friend and tomorrow we may be its victims.

  Owen D. Young

  Mean, Power, Government

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• How can faceless bureaucrats in an intelligence agency deny brave soldiers a chance to tell the truth?

  Curt Weldon

  Veterans Day, Truth, Ethos

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• I joined the city government, and we start to operate as the bureaucrats on the local level, so we were the only ones in the whole Russian team who were experienced in practical bureaucratic management in the complicated condition of 1990.

  Anatoly Chubais

  Team, Government, Cities

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• More and more, revolution has found itself delivered into the hands of its bureaucrats and doctrinaires on the one hand, and to the enfeebled and bewildered masses on the other.

  Albert Camus

  Hands, Revolution, Rebellious

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.216, Vintage

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• The brain is full of lonely ideas, begging you to make some sense of them, to recognize them as interesting. The lazy brain just files them away in old pigeonholes, like a bureaucrat who wants an easy life. The lively brain picks and chooses and creates new works of art out of ideas.

  Theodore Zeldin

  Lonely, Art, Begging You

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• Journalists are supposed to be skeptical, that's what keeps them digging rather than simply accepting the official line, whether it comes from government or corporate bureaucrats.

  Linda Chavez

  Government, Sea, Digging

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• Only to bureaucrats can the idea occur that establishing new offices, promulgating new decrees, and increasing the number of government employees alone can be described as positive and beneficial measures.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Government, Ideas, Numbers

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

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• There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right.

  Elinor Ostrom

  Believe, People, Incentives

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• The happiness of being envied is glamour.
  Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable. In this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power. The power of the glamorous resides in their supposed happiness: the power of the bureaucrat in his supposed authority.

  John Berger

  Envy, Reassurance, Illusion

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• The why is what makes journalism an adult game. The why is what makes policy coherent and useful. The why is what transforms bureaucrats and foot soldiers and political leaders into viable instruments of rational and affirmative change. The why is everything and without it, the very suggestion of human progress becomes a cosmic joke.

  David Simon

  Games, Feet, Leader

  "The escalating breakdown of urban society across the US" by David Simon, www.theguardian.com. September 5, 2008.

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• A bureaucrat is an official who is clothed with power and whom it doesn't fit.

  Evan Esar

  Fit, Bureaucracy, Officials

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• Never give a bureaucrat a chance to say no.

  Morton Blackwell

  Giving, Chance

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• Nothing symbolizes American strength and vigor more than another unaccountable Washington bureaucrat.

  Michelle Malkin

  Vigor, American Strength

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• Firebugs dragging their gasoline bottles are approaching the Academy of Arts, with a grin. And so, instead of embracing them, let us demand the freedom of the elbow to knock the bottles out of their filthy hands. Even the most blockheaded bureaucrat, provided he loves peace, is a greater lover of the arts than any so-called art-lover who loves the arts of war.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Art, War, Hands

  "Brecht on Brecht: An Improvisation". Book by George Tabori, 1967.

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• It is time for us to take off our masks, to step out from behind our personas - whatever they might be: educators, activists, biologists, geologists, writers, farmers, ranchers, and bureaucrats - and admit we are lovers, engaged in an erotics of place. Loving the land. Honoring its mysteries. Acknowledging, embracing the spirit of place - there is nothing more legitimate and there is nothing more true. That is why we are here. That is why we do what we do. There is nothing intellectual about it. We love the land. It is a primal affair.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Land, Intellectual, Farmers And Ranchers

  Terry Tempest Williams (2015). “An Unspoken Hunger”, p.77, Vintage

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• If entrepreneurs were running schools, instead of bureaucrats, schools would be teaching a lot more of the skills and mindsets found in this book. Since they're not, this book is a necessary antidote to a traditional college education.

  Scott Banister

  Running, Teaching, Book

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• Under the antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. If he complies with one of these laws, he faces criminal prosecution under several others. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful 'intent to monopolize'; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for 'unfair competition' or 'restraint of trade'; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for 'collusion' or 'conspiracy.'

  Ayn Rand

  Successful, Men, Law

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.46, Penguin

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• The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted - or rather tend to be corrupted - by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Organization, People, Political

  "The State and Revolution". Book by Vladimir Lenin. Chapter 6, www.marxists.org. 1917.

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