188 Quotes About Bureaucracy

Remove the document—and you remove the man.

How many twenty-second-century bureaucrats did it take to change a light panel?We'll have a sub-committee meeting and get back to you with an estimate.

Shara now sits on committees that decide who shall be nominated to be committee chairs for other committees; then, after these meetings, she sits on committee meetings to formulate agendas for future meetings; and after these, she attends committee meetings deciding who shall be appointed to appoint appointments to committees.

The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

To be fair, what looks like conspiracy often turns out to be bureaucracy.

It is the premise of this book that we live in a deeply bureau­cratic society. If we do not notice it, it is largely because bureau­cratic practices and requirements have become so all-pervasive that we can barely see them—or worse, cannot imagine doing things any other way.

Useful professions are clearly meant for the public, but those whose utility is more dubious can only justify their existence by assuming that the public is meant for them.

Idle hands were the devil’s tools, and an effective bureaucracy could never be too convoluted.

The chains that cuff humanity are made of office paper