Thoughts of Famous Bureaucracy Quotes in English

Bureaucracy quotes frequently illuminate the significant inefficiencies and frustrations that are often embedded within complex administrative systems. These systems, while designed to provide structure and order, can inadvertently create barriers to effective governance. For example, the prominent philosopher Max Weber meticulously analyzed the characteristics of bureaucracy and highlighted that it is fundamentally structured around a hierarchical framework, where authority is concentrated at various levels. This hierarchical organization, alongside a rigidly defined set of established rules and procedures, can cultivate a culture that is resistant to change and innovation. As a result, organizations may find themselves entrenched in outdated practices, unable to adapt swiftly to new challenges or opportunities in a dynamic environment.

In a similar vein, political commentator H.L. Mencken offered a poignant observation on the relationship between bureaucracy and individual thought. He famously remarked that "the most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself." This statement underscores the notion that bureaucratic systems can often suppress independent thinking and initiative, creating an environment in which conformity is valued over creativity. When individuals within a bureaucracy feel compelled to adhere strictly to established protocols, the potential for innovative ideas and solutions is significantly diminished.

These insightful critiques not only reflect the limitations inherent in bureaucratic structures but also expose how such systems can obscure accountability and responsiveness in governance. When decisions are made within a tightly controlled framework, the connection between action and outcome becomes less transparent, making it challenging for citizens to hold their governments accountable. Consequently, the interplay of bureaucracy, hierarchy, and rule-making can lead to a governance model that is less responsive to the needs and aspirations of the populace, thereby compromising the effectiveness of public administration.

Thought of the day Bureaucracy

The first law of bureaucracy is to guarantee its own continuance.

- Carl Sagan Download or Share Images

I sighed. I hated the maze of bureaucracy with a passion, but I've found the best way to deal with it is to smile and act stupid. That way, no one gets confused.

- Kim Harrison

Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof they were busy.

- Charles Peters

Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients.

Alan Keyes

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

Ronald Reagan

After the loss of its eastern wing, which became Bangladesh in 1971, Pakistan has been completely dominated by one ethnic group, the Punjabis, who tend to favour the ideological model for Pakistan and are heavily represented in the military, the media and the bureaucracy.

- Husain Haqqani

A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.

Walter Bagehot

We need to do a top/bottom review of the federal government and for every agency administration bureaucracy that is not called for in the United States Constitution, we have to really ask the question what is its purpose, how many people work there, how much does it cost the taxpayers and what is the value to our society.

Josh Mandel

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.

Alain De Botton

The most profound legacy of the dominance of bureaucratic forms of organization over the last two hundred years is that it has made this intuitive division between rational, technical means and the ultimately irrational ends to which they are put seem like common sense.

- David Graeber

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

- Jerry Pournelle

Bureaucracy Quotes List

Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible. 

- Javier Pascual

Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.

- Javier Pascual

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies. 

Honoré de Balzac

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Honoré de Balzac Quotation

A bureaucrat who said no to everything rarely got in trouble.

- Tom Clancy

A bureaucrat who said no to everything rarely got in trouble.

- A Quotation From Tom Clancy

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

- Eugene J. McCarthy

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

- Eugene J. McCarthy

Bureaucracy gives birth to itself and then expects maternity benefits. 

- Dale Dauten

Bureaucracy gives birth to itself and then expects maternity benefits.

- Dale Dauten

Religion, to me, is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don't need.


- Bill Maher

Religion, to me, is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don't need.

- Bill Maher

Some third person decides your fate: this is the whole essence of bureaucracy.

- Kollontai Alexandra

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

Oscar Wilde

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

Karl Marx

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

Evan Esar

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

- Mary McCarthy

Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.

Joseph A. Schumpeter

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Franz Kafka

It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results.

Walter Bagehot

A mayor is a symbol and a public face of what a city bureaucracy provides its citizens.

John Hickenlooper

Corrupt corporate governments employ corrupt bureaucrats that enact corrupt policies.

- Steven Magee

It’s the first rule of bureaucracy: any message worth sending is worth sending in triplicate.

- Paolo Bacigalupi

The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.

- John Stuart Mill

Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses.

- Unknown

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

- P. J. O'Rourke

In any bureaucracy, there's a natural tendency to let the system become an excuse for inaction.

Chris Fussell

There's so much in the 21st century that is stymied by bureaucracy and mediocrity and committee.

- Benedict Cumberbatch

Paperwork is the embalming fluid of bureaucracy, maintaining an appearance of life where none exists.

- Robert H. Meltzer

I have an institutional fear of big government. I have an institutional opposition to bureaucracy.

Rush Limbaugh

Sometimes he would rather battle a demon from Hell than grapple with the bureaucracy of man.

- E.A. Bucchianeri

The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge.

Karl Marx

War is a cauldron that softens bureaucracy and expedites the formation of formidable reputations.

- Stewart Stafford

Success in bureaucratic politics comes when those in charge claim a once-unpopular idea as their own.

- Fred Kaplan

If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy, God will forgive you but the bureaucracy.

- Hyman George Rickover

There comes a time in the history of all bureaucracies when they must inevitably parody their own functions.

Roger Zelazny

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat Scorned.

- Milton Friedman Quotes

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat Scorned.

- Bureaucracy Quotes by Milton Friedman Download or Share Images

Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.

- James Boren

Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.

- Bureaucracy Quotes by James Boren Download or Share Images

Bureaucracy by its nature resists change and nullifies progress. 

- James Cook

Bureaucracy by its nature resists change and nullifies progress.

- James Cook Download or Share Images

I really hate bureaucracy and the idea that I'm not a free person.

- Paloma Faith

I really hate bureaucracy and the idea that I'm not a free person.

- Bureaucracy Quotes in English by Paloma Faith Download or Share Images

Bureaucracy progresses at its own pace. That is to say, slowly.

- Frédéric Martel

Bureaucracy progresses at its own pace. That is to say, slowly.

- Frédéric Martel Download or Share Images

Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.

- Bureaucracy Quotes by Albert Einstein Download or Share Images

The first law of bureaucracy is to guarantee its own continuance.

- Carl Sagan Download or Share Images *

Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

- Oscar Wilde Download or Share Images

Bureaucracy is like a fungus that contaminates everything.

- Jaime Lerner Download or Share Images

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.

- Laurence J. Peter Download or Share Images

The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.

- Brooks Atkinson

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

Eugene McCarthy

Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.

Charles Peters

It's a poor bureaucrat who can't stall a good idea until even its sponsor is relieved to see it dead and officially buried.

Robert C. Townsend

The answer for healthcare is market incentives, not healthcare by a Godzilla-sized government bureaucracy.

Mitt Romney

Bureaucracy is a huge beast; deeply rooted, it exists even among artists; it’s an almost losing battle against it.

- Dejan Stojanovic

If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.

- Hyman G. Rickover

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

Wangari Maathai

There's so much kind of bureaucracy involved with the whole concept of net neutrality and like technical stuff.

Terry Gross

The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.

- Brooks Atkinson

In the forbidden zone of interpretation, the tyranny of language becomes the poisoned-tip of the bureaucratic spear.

- Stewart Stafford

It's that government bureaucracies crush innovation. We are falling further and further behind in our government.

Carly Fiorina

Too many vital education dollars that should be spent in the classroom are bouncing around in the federal bureaucracy.

Mark Kennedy

Bureaucracies force us to practice nonsense. And if you rehearse nonsense, you may one day find yourself the victim of it.

- Laurence Gonzales

But in Africa bureaucrats are usually too proud to accept a bribe, something I admire when I'm not the one being arrested.

- Tahir Shah

We're getting rid of bureaucracy, so that we're releasing time for police officers to be crime fighters and not form writers.

Theresa May

Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.

P. J. O'Rourke

You'll never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

- Thomas Sowell

Hell was hot and full of unkind people in a hurry; there was far too much red tape; and the bureaucrats were all shockingly corrupt.

- Zen Cho

Bureaucrats do not take kindly to intercessions. Their one satisfaction in life is to keep us waiting in line, begging for that last signature.

- Germaine Shames

Misdirected focus on paperwork, on procedures, and on bureaucracy frustrates teachers and fails to give children the education they need.

Christopher Bond

Bureaucracies tend to grow and to brag about their growth based on how many individuals they have and how much money they spend.

Darrell Issa

The U.N. bureaucracy has grown to elephantine proportions. Now that the Cold War is over, we are asking that elephant to do gymnastics.

Madeleine Albright

Any sensible government must learn to unleash the energy of its people and get them to perform instead of trying to get a bureaucracy to perform.

- Verghese Kurien

In any government bureaucracy, they are not working for you but for the mythical blob called the 'public sector,' which is really nothing but a stash of stolen cash divided among the robber class.

Llewellyn Rockwell

Such schemes take money from people who can least afford to spend it to support an unneeded bureaucracy that eats money people thought they were providing for education.

Jesse Helms

We will cut programs, we will try to rein in the size of the bureaucracy. We will bring federal pay scales that have become so exaggerated into line with market rates.

Eric Cantor

In fact, the private sector is improving their algorithmic ability to search through big data month after month after month. And, of course, a big government bureaucracy isn't keeping up.

Carly Fiorina

The minute health care becomes a huge, unwieldy, expensive government bureaucracy it's a permanent feature of life and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

- Mark Steyn

We need to remind our core supporters that we have not forgotten their concern with the way our democracy is being replaced by European bureaucracy in so many areas.

John Redwood

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

Thomas Sowell

Bureaucracy is ever desirous of spreading its influence and its power. You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people's souls and thoughts.

Herbert Hoover

It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the earth can sustain, and that human civilization will collapse when the number of, say, tax lawyers exceeds the world's total population of farmers, weavers, fisherpersons, and pediatric nurses.

Barbara Ehrenreich

That is why I strongly believe we should working in Congress to make America a better place to run a business by reducing the costly burdens of bureaucracy and red tape.

Michael K. Simpson

Congress, the press, and the bureaucracy too often focus on how much money or effort is spent, rather than whether the money or effort actually achieves the announced goal.

Donald Rumsfeld

Every year the Federal Government wastes billions of dollars as a result of overpayments of government agencies, misuse of government credit cards, abuse of the Federal entitlement programs, and the mismanagement of the Federal bureaucracy.

Chris Chocola

As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.

- Adam Smith

When I talk to teachers they tell me the things they'd most like from any government are a reduction in bureaucracy, support to help ensure good discipline and a reformed Ofsted.

Michael Gove Thoughts

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

Getting things done in this country, if you want to build something, if you want to start a company, it's getting to be virtually impossible with all of the bureaucracy and all of the approvals.

Donald Trump

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

- Aldous Huxley

This always confuses liberals, that conservatives like the military and don't like the bureaucracy. That's because the military has their guns pointed out and the bureaucracy has them pointed in.

Grover Norquist

I believe the best service to the child is the service closest to the child, and children who are victims of neglect, abuse, or abandonment must not also be victims of bureaucracy. They deserve our devoted attention, not our divided attention.

- Kenny Guinn

Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.

- P.D. James

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

The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. The top entrusts the understanding of detail to the lower levels, whilst the lower levels credit the top with understanding of the general and so all are mutually deceived.

Karl Marx

I'm against big bureaucracy in Washington making health care decisions. I just have an aversion to bureaucrats. But it's not just government bureaucrats. I don't like HMO bureaucrats and insurance company bureaucrats either.

Gary Bauer

Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is dehumanized, the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation.

Max Weber

Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

- Frank Herbert