Bill Maher - Wall Street 1987 - Yes Minister TV - Milton Friedman - David Schiffers - Richard Miles TV - Tom Peters - James H Boren - Franz Kafka - Alan Keyes - Madeleine Albright - Mary McCarthy - Douglas Adams - Alain de Botton - Honore de Balzac - Oscar Wilde - Erich Fromm - Frank Herbert - Herbert Hoover - John Stuart Mill - Leon Trotsky – Joann Fletcher TV - Misha Glenny - Mark Thomas TV - Red Dwarf TV - Adam Curtis TV - Benedict Cumberbatch - Richard Nixon - William Jenner - C S Lewis -
Religion, to me, is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don’t need. Bill Maher
You are all being screwed over by these bureaucrats. Wall Street 1987 starring Michael Douglas & Charlie Sheen & Daryl Hannah & Martin Sheen & John C McGinley & Terence Stamp & James Karen & Hal Holbrook & Sean Young & James Spader et al, director Oliver Stone, Gordon Gecko to shareholders
The waste of it all. Take that EEC reception last night: Humphrey introduced me to an official who spends his entire time paying a lot of farmers to produce masses of surplus food, and then he introduced me to another official who spends all of his time paying a lot of others to destroy all the surpluses. And then they pay thousands of bureaucrats to push masses of pieces of paper around to make it all work. Doesn’t the futility of it all depress you, Bernard? Yes, Minister: Party Games, Jim Christmas Special BBC 1984
Jim: The National Health Service, Humphrey, is an advanced case of galloping bureaucracy.
Sir Humphrey: Ooooh, certainly not galloping. A gentle canter at the most. Yes, Minister s2e1: The Compassionate Society, BBC 1981
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned. Milton Friedman
The heroes you crucify, and the bureaucrats sit out there and tell each other what a great job they’re doing until another city blows up. And then they say, we need more tools. David Schiffers, Investigative Counsel of Bill Clinton
The system was remarkably efficient and streamlined. The whole of the Empire was administered by just ten thousand of these bureaucrats. Modern Britain has half a million. Professor Richard Miles, The Ancient World VI, City of Man, City of God, BBC 2010
The bureaucracy-bashing revolution is under way. It’s no longer management by the book and in fact the book has been re-written and in some cases literally thrown out. Tom Peters, founder Liberation Management
Guidelines for bureaucrats: 1) When in charge, ponder; 2) When in trouble, delegate; 3) When in doubt, mumble. James H Boren, New York Times 8 November 1970
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. Franz Kafka
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
The UN bureaucracy has grown to elephantine proportions. Now that the Cold War is over, we are asking that elephant to do gymnastics. Madeleine Albright
Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. Mary McCarthy
‘But the plans were on display ...’
‘On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.’
‘That’s the display department.’
‘With a flashlight.’
‘Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.’
‘So had the stairs.’
‘But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur, ‘yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.’ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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 Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Bureaucracy – the giant power wielded by pygmies. Honoré de Balzac
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. Oscar Wilde
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, The Art of Loving, 1956
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. Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune, 1984
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, campaign speech in New York 22 October 1928
A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy. John Stuart Mill, On Representative Government VI, 1861
Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other. Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed p41, 1936
Levels of bureaucracy that border on the obsessive. Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
But while Kafka’s bureaucracy may have moved into the shadows after the Revolution, it still lurked discreetly. Misha Glenny, McMafia
Spies … are civil servants … a lot of them do a lot of boring crap. They’re just bureaucrats. Mark Thomas Comedy Product s4e6, Channel 4 1999
You think I’m a petty minded bureaucratic nincompoop who delights in enforcing pernickety regulations because he gets some sort of perverse pleasure out of it: and in many ways you are absolutely damned right. Red Dwarf s6e4: Emohawk: Polymorph II, Rimmer, BBC 1993
The ultimate political goal at the heart of our age is the idea of individual freedom. In Britain our government has set out to create a revolution that will free individuals from old elites and bureaucracies. A new world where we are free to choose our lives not be trapped by class or income into predestined roles … ‘To liberate Britain from all the old class divisions, old structures, old prejudices [Blair] …’ Adam Curtis, The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom: Fuck You Buddy, BBC 2007
5,484. It is a very strange kind of freedom. The attempt to liberate people from the dead hand of bureaucracy has led to the rise of a new and increasingly controlling system of management driven by targets and numbers. While governments committed to creating freedom of choice in all areas have actually presided over a rise in inequalities and a dramatic collapse in social mobility. The consequence has been a return of the power of class and privilege. And abroad the attempt to create democracy has led not just to bloody mayhem but a rejection of the American-led campaign to bring freedom. ibid.
[Friedrich] Von Hayek had fled the Nazis and now taught at the University of Chicago: Hayek was convinced that the use of politics to plan society was far more dangerous than any problems produced by companies. Because it inevitably led to tyranny and the end of freedom. ibid.
They [strategists] turned to a new idea called Game Theory. Game Theory had been developed as a way of mathematically analysing poker games. ibid.
A military think-tank called the Rand Corporation: and the strategists at Rand used Game Theory to create mathematical models that predicted how the Soviets would behave in response to what they saw the Americans doing. ibid.
Underlying Game Theory was a dark vision of human beings who were driven only by self-interest constantly distrusting of those around them. ibid.
The mathematical genius John Nash … In reality Nash was difficult and spiky; he was notorious at Rand for inventing a series of cruel games. The most famous he called Fuck You, Buddy. ibid.
A system driven by and selfishness did not have to lead have to chaos. He proved that there could always be a point of equilibrium in which everyone’s self-interest was perfectly balanced against each other … Selfishness always led to a safer outcome: it was called the Prisoners’ dilemma. ibid.