“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 (1920-1986)
"Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy".
— Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
“Bureaucracies force us to practice nonsense. And if you rehearse nonsense, you may one day find yourself the victim of it.”
― Laurence Gonzales
“There is no crueler hells than committee work.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett
“The greatest power of bureaucracies is to make the smart act stupid and the good to act evil.”
― Raul Ramos y Sanchez
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
—Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
“Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work”
—Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible”
—Javier Pascual Salcedo
“Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.”
— James Boren
Bennis's First Law of Academic Pseudodynamics:
"Routine work drives out non routine work and smothers all creative planning, all fundamental change in the university--or any institution."
—Warren Bennis (1925-2014)
Bennis's Second Law of Academic Pseudodynamics: "Make whatever grand plans you will, but you may be sure that the unexpected or the trivial will disturb and disrupt them."
—Warren Bennis (1925-2014)
"En komité er en gruppe udugelige valgt av uvillige til å gjøre det umulige"
—Liv Ullmann
"Neste gang sjefen skal ha en rapport om produksjon eller risiko eller sykefravær eller systemrevisjon, send en e-post der det står:
Det som skjer, det skjer
Jeg kan ikke si deg mer."
—Per Fugelli (1943-2017)
"History has shown that there are very few mechanisms as effective at maintaining the status quo as a set of institutionalized regulations. Once set in regulatory concrete, reconsideration of the basic underlying assumptions is very difficult. While it will be an uphill fight to re-examine the basic underlying assumptions of any law or administrative rule, it is clearly not impossible. It will just take longer than if not so well institutionalized."
—Paul Baran (1926-2011)
"The prize for ultimate inefficiency goes to America. We have built in so many checks and balances that our 'leaders' are the most thoroughly hogtied of any on Earth."
—Nathan Myhrvold
“Bureaucracy is undoubtedly the weapon and sign of a despotic government, inasmuch as it gives whatever government it serves, despotic power.”
—Lord Acton (1834-1902)
“Bureaucracy tries to establish so many administrative maxims that the minister is as narrowly controlled and guided as the judge.”
—Lord Acton (1834-1902)
"The only risk of failure is promotion."
― Scott Adams
"The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management."
― Scott Adams
"En dag da Satan fikk i sinn,
at intet måtte skje,
da satte han i verden inn
den første komité."
—Vilhelm Bergsøe (1835-1911)