69 quotes found
“Some third person decides your fate: this is the whole essence of bureaucracy.”
“Humphrey Not another czar, please, Prime Minister. In the last three years we’ve appointed an Enterprise Czar, a Youth-Crime Czar, a Welfare Supremo, a Pre-School Supremo, an Unemployment Watchdog,...”
“Let’s form a committee tasked with exploring why committees are so ineffective. Then we’ll stand-back and watch it argue and self-destruct.”
“These definitions coincide with the terms which, since Greek antiquity, have been used to define the forms of government as the rule of man over man—of one or the few in monarchy and oligarchy, of ...”
“The “self-actualization” philosophy from which most of this new bureaucratic language emerged insists that we live in a timeless present, that history means nothing, that we simply create the world...”
“The idealized market was supposed to deliver ‘friction free’ exchanges, in which the desires of consumers would be met directly, without the need for intervention or mediation by regulatory agencie...”
“Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.”
“What is all this? Get him out of here, devil take me!” And that one, imagine, smiles and says: “Devil take you? That, in fact, can be done!” And—bang!”
“In our time... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imagi...”
