Bureaucrat Quotes & Sayings

Yet as a distinction, citizenship is entirely artificial. An accident of birth, a quirk in the law, or the whim of a bureaucrat can mean the difference between a life of comfort or a life of struggle. — Stephan Faris

Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear. — Ayn Rand

At moments like this he suspected that Hitler had been nothing but a harried bureaucrat and Satan himself a mental defective with a rudimentary sense of humor - the kind that finds feeding firecrackers wrapped in bread to seagulls unutterably funny. — Stephen King

For small community banks and credit unions, like those in Central and Northern Wisconsin, the hundreds of new rules will require an estimated 2,260,631 labor hours just for compliance. Those are hours that your local bank or credit union will spend dealing with some Washington bureaucrat instead of focusing on the needs of customers like you. — Sean Duffy

A BUSINESSMAN cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, He suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss.
A bureaucrat, forces you to obey his decisions, whether you agree with him or not ... If he makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; If he fails, He passes the loss on to you, in the form of heavier taxes. — Ayn Rand

I am not aspiring to be a senior bureaucrat. It would limit my freedom. — Alexander Lebedev

He spent the next weeks blocking scenes of the bureaucrat fucking his wife. On the floor with cooking ingredients. Standing, with socks still on. In the grass of the yard of their new and immense house. He imagined her making noises she never made for him and feeling pleasures he could never provide because the bureaucrat was a man, and he was not a man. Does she suck his penis? he wondered. I know this is a silly thought, a thought that will only bring me pain, but I can't free myself of it. And when she sucks his penis, because she must, what is he doing? Is he pulling her hair back to watch? Is he touching her chest? Is he thinking of someone else? I'll kill him if he is. — Jonathan Safran Foer

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem. — Gore Vidal

The bureaucrat is a man who administers things and people, and who relates himself to people as to things. — Erich Fromm

A lesson in bringing about true changes of mind and heart comes from a Japanese functionary. By day, he crunched numbers that showed his country was approaching imminent energy crisis and helped to craft policy. By night, he weaved a novel in which a bureaucrat-hero helps see the country through to new energy sources. When the crisis came faster than he expected, he actually put the novel away because he did not want to make the burden of his countrymen worse. When the short-term crisis passed, he published his novel. It's phenomenal and well-timed success fueled the vision that inspired difficult change and maintained a sense of urgency. — Daniel Yergin

We must be polite, Syen," he says. He's still smiling, but he's furious; she can tell because he's flashing too many teeth. "We're only orogenes, after all. And this is a member of the Stillness's most esteemed use-caste. We are merely here to wield powers greater than she can comprehend in order to save her region's economy, while she - " He waggles a finger at the woman, not even trying to hide his sarcasm. "She is a pedantic minor bureaucrat. But I'm sure she's a very important pedantic minor bureaucrat. — N.K. Jemisin

In a free society, the 'vision thing' is left to private individuals; civil servants are kept on a tight leash, because free people understand that a 'visionary' bureaucrat is a voracious one and that the grander the government ... the poorer and less free the people. — Ilana Mercer

Louis XIV was very frank and sincere when he said: I am the State. The modern statist is modest. He says: I am the servant of the State; but, he implies, the State is God. You could revolt against a Bourbon king, and the French did it. This was, of course, a struggle of man against man. But you cannot revolt against the god State and against his humble handy man, the bureaucrat. — Ludwig Von Mises

By the time the Deputy Minister presents a matter for decision to cabinet, he or she tends to present three options: ' the unacceptable', 'the politically courageous', and 'the bureaucrat-preferred' options. As such, it is usually best to get down into the department to the person doing the first drafts of any policy. — Don Johnston

Beta Males make excellent spies. Not the "James Bond, Aston Martin with missiles, boning the beautiful Russian rocket scientist on an ermineskin bedspread" sort of spy - more the "bad comb-over, deep-cover bureaucrat fishing coffee-sodden documents out of a Dumpster" spy. — Christopher Moore

Whoever sides with the revolutionary people is a revolutionary. Whoever sides with imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism is a counter-revolutionary. Whomever sides with the revolutionary people in words only but acts otherwise is a revolutionary in speech. Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense. — Mao Zedong

A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants. — Harry Truman

As we know from our government, the more power you have, the more of a bureaucrat you are, and the more ego you have invested in being right, the greater the odds are that you will never change your opinion. — Richard Linklater

impossible for a bureaucrat to keep his hands clean and still serve! — Sangeeta Bahadur

What can I do if everyone from the president to a junior bureaucrat is dying to convict me. If I am such a criminal, what was I doing outside jail before my marriage to Benazir? — Asif Ali Zardari

Under this law (Controlled Substances Act) a bureaucrat-usually not elected-decides whether or not a substance is dangerous and how dangerous that substance is. There's no more messing around with legislatures, presidents, or other bothersome formalities. When MDMA (ecstasy) was made illegal in 1986, no elected official voted on that. It was done "in house." People are now in jail because they did something that an administrator declared was wrong. — Peter McWilliams

Angels and Demons aren't my thing, sir. I'm a bureaucrat. We're much, much worse — Joshua Hale Fialkov

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights. — H.L. Mencken

To him, one of the most fascinating historical aspects of governments was their complete disregard for governing. Governments were single-minded and interested only in increasing their control and any governance that came out of the government's actions were purely coincidental ... The lowest flunky as well as the most powerful bureaucrat was more interested in protecting his sinecure than in helping the citizens who coughed up tax money to pay the government worker's salaries. — Hank Quense

Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life. — Richard Lindzen

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 Townsend

I froze, shocked. (And don't try to claim that you did anything different the first time a government bureaucrat pulled a gun on you.) — Brandon Sanderson

I always thought of myself as a kind of literary bureaucrat. And that was never going to be enough for me. — Michael Korda

Roy was just another bureaucrat to me, but I realized very soon that without Roy this thing would have died. — Ben Shahn

I don't want to end up a bureaucrat in the time-management business for God or a librarian cataloguing timeless truths. Salvation is kicking in the womb of creation right now, any time now. Pay attention. — Eugene H. Peterson

A few years later, Mendeleev, now famous, divorced his wife and wanted to remarry. Although the conservative local church said he had to wait seven years, he bribed a priest and got on with the nuptials. This technically made him a bigamist, but no one dared arrest him. When a local bureaucrat complained to the tsar about the double standard applied to the case- the priest was defrocked-the tsar primly replied, I admit, Mendeleev has two wives, but I have only one Mendeleev. — Sam Kean

Le Carre's voice - patrician, cold, brilliant and amused - was perfect for the wilderness-of-mirrors undertow of the Cold War, and George Smiley is the all-time harassed bureaucrat of spy fiction. — Alan Furst

Who will protect your rights better? A king, president or you? Who will protect the truth? A reporter, a labor union or you? Who will protect and teach your children to seek truth? A textbook committee, an education bureaucrat, or you? Did a commission of wise men stop the Holocaust? Did a committee of Congress end Jim Crow? No. In each case, the work was done by individuals who would not abide convenient lies. They saw injustice and they called it out. They saw their nation wage war against a single group and they said "not in my name." They didn't wait for the conventions of society to catch up to God's laws. They pushed. They pressed. And they were victorious. — Glenn Beck

Just as the attempts to preserve the power of knights in armor were doomed to fail in the face of gunpowder weapons, so the modern notions of nationalism and citizenship are doomed to be short-circuited by microtechnology. Indeed, they will eventually become comic in much the way that the sixteenth century. The cherished civic notions of the twentieth century will be comic anachronisms to new generations after the transformation of the year 2000. The Don Quixote of the twenty-first century will not be a knight-errant struggling to revive the glories of feudalism but a bureaucrat in a brown suit, a tax collector yearning for a citizen to audit. — James Dale Davidson

In the old days feminists would mock women who depended so much on a man. Today if the man is the government, not so much. A man who opens the door for you is a Neanderthal; a bureaucrat who pays for your pills? A hero. — Greg Gutfeld

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

There's no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw. It's like saying that as of 1932, cars didn't have radios in them, so they should never have radios in them. — Bill Gates

But to a bureaucrat paper was never just paper. Paper was life! — Viet Thanh Nguyen

He was a bureaucrat, not a hitman, and most of the time that's what supervillainy looks like in real life. — Ben Dyer

Such bureaucrats can neither be hurried in their deliberations nor made to see common sense. Indeed, the very absurdity or pedantry of these deliberations is for them the guarantee of their own fair-mindedness, impartiality, and disinterest. To treat all people with equal contempt and indifference is the bureaucrat's idea of equity. — Theodore Dalrymple

That the Texas Legislature, that the Texas school boards, the Texas teachers, we collectively know best how to educate our children, rather than some bureaucrat in Washington. — Rick Perry

If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences. — Ayn Rand

The real trouble with the doctor image in America is that it has been grayed by the image of the doctor-as-businessman, the doctor-as-bureaucrat, the doctor-as-medical-robot, and the doctor-as-terrified-victim-of-malpractice-suits. — Shana Alexander

Is not literature meant to speak of our being a thousand different kinds of things, at times creating even this diversity? If literature gives up this purpose, this duty, it renounces all claim to legitimacy. I am Hungarian. I am Slovene. I am Serbian. You do not need literature for sentences like that. A bureaucrat will do, and a rubber stamp. A border guard. An Army. — Peter Esterhazy

The brain is full of lonely ideas, begging you to make some sense of them, to recognize them as interesting. The lazy brain just files them away in old pigeonholes, like a bureaucrat who wants an easy life. The lively brain picks and chooses and creates new works of art out of ideas. — Theodore Zeldin

My image of "a Communist" was not a Soviet bureaucrat but my friend Leon's father, a cabdriver who came home from work bruised and bloody one day, beaten up by his employer's goons (yes, that word was soon part of my vocabulary) for trying to organize his fellow cabdrivers into a union. — Howard Zinn

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him. — Karl Marx

FCC power rests on ... nonobjective law (which) delivers men's lives, fortunes, careers, ambitions into the arbitrary power of a bureaucrat who can reward or punish at whim. — Ayn Rand

The bureaucrat fell from the sky. — Michael Swanwick

Webster lapsed into silence. Started thinking hard. He was a smart enough bureaucrat to know if you can't beat them, you join them. You force yourself to think like they think. — Lee Child

Last night, John McCain said that under the Democratic health care plan, a bureaucrat would stand between you and your doctor, as opposed to the Republican health care plan, where an accountant would stand between you and your health care. — Jay Leno

Another merit of home is that it preserves the diversity between individuals. If we were all alike, it might be convenient for the bureaucrat and the statistician, but it would be very dull, and would lead to a very unprogressive society. — Bertrand Russell

Government departments are arranged hierarchically; those at the top are used to issuing orders and expect them to be carried out by their subordinates right down the line. Minow assumed that a cultural institution like television has a similar hierarchical structure, as if television executives could requisition more creative programming the way a bureaucrat orders new pencils or department stationery. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned. — Milton Friedman

All government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer. — Murray Rothbard

To most people in a bureaucracy, the main thing is that they've got a steady paycheck, because who ever lays off a bureaucrat? — John Ringo

We use our tax dollars to pay some bureaucrat to kill a mountain lion, dig a hole and bury this precious beast. No one gets to eat it, nobody gets to buy licenses, fees and taxes themselves. And that's only after a mountain lion has killed somebody! Oh my God! And the Osbournes are still No. 1! — Ted Nugent

Nothing symbolizes American strength and vigor more than another unaccountable Washington bureaucrat. — Michelle Malkin

I don't want anybody between a doctor and a patient - not an insurance company bureaucrat or a Washington bureaucrat. — John Barrasso

Robert Ashford possessed one of the key character flaws necessary to a traitor. He thought he was smarter than everyone else. This allowed the overeducated career bureaucrat to sell out his own country, because he believed he knew what was best for his nation and its people. — Brad Thor

The happiness of being envied is glamour.
Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable. In this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power. The power of the glamorous resides in their supposed happiness: the power of the bureaucrat in his supposed authority. — John Berger

And what does an anthropologist do these days?" sad Paul.
"Same thing a supernumerary minister does
becomes a public charge, a bore, or possibly a rum-dum, or a bureaucrat. — Kurt Vonnegut

Now I'm a glorified bureaucrat holding on by my fingernails as we all slide into super-powered chaos. A voice of reason in a world gone mad. — Matt Kindt

The clear, unmistakable sign of a bureaucrat is somebody who worries about whether he has a window. — Herb Kelleher

In Stalin each [Soviet bureaucrat] easily finds himself. But Stalin also finds in each one a small part of his own spirit. Stalin is the personification of the bureaucracy. That is the substance of his political personality. — Leon Trotsky

There is nothing quite so depressing as waking up to face a day when you know that you are going to have to deal with a government office or bureaucrat. — Neal Boortz

A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures? — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Egypt: Where the Israelites would still be if Moses had been a bureaucrat. — Laurence J. Peter

I soon learned that it is always easier for a bureaucrat to say no. They can't get in trouble saying no. — Terri Irwin

Public schools are government-established, politician- and bureaucrat-controlled, fully politicized, taxpayer-supported, authoritarian socialist institutions. In fact, the public-school system is one of the purest examples of socialism existing in America. — Tom L. Johnson

If I had been under ObamaCare, and a bureaucrat had been trying to tell me when I could get that CT scan, that would have delayed my treatment. I was able to get the treatment as fast as I could based upon my timetable, and not the government's timetable. That's what saved my life. — Herman Cain

Do you know Aggrey Awori?' Mushana said, 'He's an old man.' Awori was my age, regarded as a miracle of longevity in an AIDS stricken country; a Harvard graduate, Class of '63, a track star. Thirty years ago, a rising bureaucrat, friend and confidant of the pugnacious prime minister, Milton Obote, a pompous gap-toothed northerner who had placed his trust in a goofy general named Idi Amin. Awori, powerful then, had been something of a scourge and a nationalist, but he was from a tribe that straddled the Kenyan border, where even the politics overlapped: Awori's brother was a minister in the Kenyan government. 'Awori is running for president.' 'Does he have a chance?' Mushana shrugged. 'Museveni will get another term. — Paul Theroux

Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator — Ludwig Von Mises

Myron was playing Mr. Bureaucrat to the hilt; nothing made a person feel more impotent. There is no darker pit than the blank stare of a bureaucrat. — Harlan Coben

There is nothing to guarantee the superior judgment, knowledge, and integrity of an inspector or a bureaucrat-and the deadly consequences of entrusting him with arbitrary power are obvious. — Alan Greenspan

My idle curiosity might lead to something more official, if the lieutenant feels his work is being hindered by an officious, small-minded, self-important bureaucrat. Not you, of course. I speak in general terms only. — Douglas Preston

They read a little bit, write a little, and especially agree with themselves on important moves, important information, important awards, important writers that they plan to enthrone forever in history through a variety of memberships and numerous prizes awarded under the influence of top bureaucrats who know everything, not only about literature, but also about secret conspiracies, the Masons that lurk in every corner to crucify someone, steal someone's soul and sell it to an unknown devil, about whom only the chief bureaucrat possesses secret knowledge that he doesn't share; about history, ghosts, missing continents; about who said what to whom in confidence. — Dejan Stojanovic

You can lead a bureaucrat to water, but you can't make him think. — Ric Keller

Naturally, bureaucrats can be expected to embrace a technology that helps to create the illusion that decisions are not under their control. Because of its seeming intelligence and impartiality, a computer has an almost magical tendency to direct attention away from the people in charge of bureaucratic functions and toward itself, as if the computer were the true source of authority. A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age, and a terrible burden to bear. — Neil Postman

Our leaders must remember that education doesn't begin with some isolated bureaucrat in Washington. It doesn't even begin with state or local officials. Education begins in the home, where it is a parental right and responsibility. — Ronald Reagan

I'd like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company. — Chuck Schumer

Think about that. Two hundred and eighty-five new or expanded programs, $2 trillion more in new spending, and not one new bureaucrat to file out the forms or answer the phones? — George W. Bush

It is bizarre that some people can't understand how a serious poet could work at a finance firm. Goethe was a bureaucrat. Eliot worked as a banker. — Katy Lederer

Decisions about your health should be between you and your doctor, not a bureaucrat and an insurance company. Let's expand choice rather than limiting it. Let's create jobs instead of destroying them. And let's bring down the costs instead of driving them up. — Rob Portman

One of the slight variances between the Stalwarts and their fellow Republicans the Half-Breeds is that the Half-Breeds, partly out of frustration with the Civil War sainthood of Grant, were clean-shirt guys more interested in stumping for mild civil service reform - a platform whose merit would make for a less stirring campaign song. A bureaucrat should pass a test, hurrah, hurrah! — Sarah Vowell

It is outrageous to know that security procedures are apparently so lax at the Department of Veterans Affairs that a single bureaucrat had the ability to put the personal information of over 26 million Veterans at risk for sale to the highest criminal bidder. — Bob Ney

Those who oppose reform will also tell you that under our plan, you won't get to choose your doctor - that some bureaucrat will choose for you. That's also not true. — Barack Obama

Old bureaucrat, my companion here present, no man ever opened an escape route for you, and you are not to blame. You built peace for yourself by blocking up every chink of light, as termites do. You rolled yourself into your ball of bourgeois security, your routines, the stifling rituals of your provincial existence, you built your humble rampart against winds and tides and stars. You have no wish to ponder great questions, you had enough trouble suppressing awareness of your human condition. You do not dwell on a wandering planet, you ask yourself no unanswerable questions — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Never give a bureaucrat a chance to say no. — Morton Blackwell

The bureaucrat is not free to aim at improvement. He is bound to obey rules and regulations established by a superior body. He has no right to embark upon innovations if his superiors do not approve of them. His duty and his virtue is to be obedient. — Ludwig Von Mises

I've met travelers who are so physically sturdy they could drink a shoebox of water from a Calcutta gutter and never get sick. People who can pick up new languages where others of us might only pick up infectious diseases. People who know how to stand down a threatening border guard or cajole an uncooperative bureaucrat at the visa office. People who are the right height and complexion that they kind of look halfway normal wherever they go - in Turkey they just might be Turks, in Mexico they are suddenly Mexican, in Spain they could be mistaken for a Basque, in Northern Africa they can sometimes pass for Arab ... — Elizabeth Gilbert

The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules. — H.L. Mencken

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

It is highly improbable that the bureaucrat will put his life on the line. It is absolutely impossible that he'll put his job on the line. — Eduardo Galeano

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

The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. — Milton Friedman

Firebugs dragging their gasoline bottles Are approaching the Academy of Arts, with a grin. And so, instead of embracing them, Let us demand the freedom of the elbow To knock the bottles out of their filthy hands. Even the most blockheaded bureaucrat, Provided he loves peace, Is a greater lover of the arts Than any so-called art-lover Who loves the arts of war. — Bertolt Brecht

We have so many priests who have gone half way ... it's sad that they did not manage to go the whole way; they have something of the employee in them, something of the bureaucrat in them and this is not good for the Church. Please be careful you don't fall into this! You are becoming pastors in the image of Jesus, the good pastor. Your aim is to resemble him and act on behalf of him amidst his flock, letting his sheep graze. — Pope Francis

It seems reasonable to say that people make good choices in contexts in which they have experience, god information, and prompt feedback - say, choosing among ice cream flavors. People know whether they like chocolate, vanilla, coffee, licorice, or something else. They do less well in contexts in which they are inexperienced and poorly informed, and in which feedback is slow or infrequent - say, in choosing between fruit and ice cream (where the long-term effects are slow and feedback is poor) or in choosing among medical treatments or investment options. If you are given fifty prescription drug plans, with multiple and varying features, you might benefit from a little help. So long as people are not choosing perfectly, some changes in the choice architecture could make their lives go better (as judged by their own preferences, not those of some bureaucrat). — Cass R. Sunstein

Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it's jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels. [Reply to the government bureaucrat of one Asian country who told him that, reason why there were workers with shovels instead of modern tractors and earth movers at a worksite of a new canal, was that: "You don't understand. This is a jobs program."] — Milton Friedman