Corporate Bureaucracy Quotes & Sayings

Why did McNamara have such good figures? Why did McNamara have such good staff work and Ball such poor staff work? The next day Ball would angrily dispatch his staff to come up with the figures, to find out how McNamara had gotten them, and the staff would burrow away and occasionally find that one of the reasons that Ball did not have comparable figures was that they did not always exist. McNamara had invented them, he dissembled even within the bureaucracy, though, of course, always for a good cause. It was part of his sense of service. He believed in what he did, and thus the morality of it was assured, and everything else fell into place. It was all right to lie and dissemble for the right causes. It was part of service, loyalty to the President, not to the nation, not to colleagues, it was a very special bureaucratic-corporate definition of integrity; you could do almost anything you wanted as long as it served your superior. — David Halberstam

Cloning represents a very clear, powerful, and immediate example in which we are in danger of turning procreation into manufacture. — Leon Kass

Smithfield spilled more than 20 million gallons of lagoon waste into the New River in North Carolina. The spill remains the largest environmental disaster of its kind and is twice as big as the iconic Exxon Valdez 6 years earlier... at the time of the spill, Smithfield was the 7th largest pork producer in the US; two years later it was the biggest. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Hiking is great because it's a lifelong sport and you're outdoors, active, so whether you call that a sport or a hobby or a recreation, I think the wording - it's a great way to get exercise, and it can be as challenging as you want to make it. — Jennifer Pharr Davis

I am happy and content with and within myself. — David Hope

Marry me,' he said. [ ... ]
'No,' she said. 'It scares me.' [ ... ]
'What aspect of it scares you?'
'The loneliness. — Josephine Humphreys