A Quote by Hannah Arendt

Bureaucracy, the rule of nobody.

Hannah Arendt

Quote Topics

Bureaucracy Nobody Rule

Quote Author

Hannah Arendt
German - Historian
October 14, 1906 - December 4, 1975

the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.

Hannah Arendt

the rule of Nobody ... is what the political form known as bureaucracy truly is.

Hannah Arendt

The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them. And one can debate long and profitably on the rule of Nobody, which is what the political form known as bureau-cracy truly is….we have become very much accustomed by modern psychology and sociology, not to speak of modern bureaucracy, to explaining away the responsibility of the doer for his deed in terms of this or that kind of determinism.

Hannah Arendt

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.[Pournelle's law of Bureaucracy]

Jerry Pournelle

There is no justice in bureaucracy for the individual, for bureaucracy caters only to itself. One cannot practice the same bureaucracy as one is fighting against.

Leon Trotsky

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

Mary McCarthy

A cardinal rule of bureaucracy is that it is better to extend an error than to admit a mistake.

Colin Greenwood

Nobody is fit to rule anybody else. It is not alleged that Mankind is perfect, or that merely through his/her natural goodness (or lack of same) he/she should (or should not) be permitted to rule. Rule as such causes abuse. There are no superpeople nor privileged classes who are above 'imperfect Mankind' and are capable or entitled to rule the rest of us. Submission to slavery means surrender of life.

Albert Meltzer

Nobody in the Washington regulatory bureaucracy gets fired for saying no.

Blake Farenthold

In a large bureaucracy, you cannot exercise the transformation of any situation without coopting bureaucracy.

Anand Mahindra

10 Rules for Being Human: Rule #1 - You will receive a body. Rule #2 - You will be presented with lessons. Rule #3 - There are no mistakes, only lessons. Rule #4 - The lesson is repeated until learned. Rule #5 - Learning does not end. Rule #6 - "There" is no better than "here". Rule #7 - Others are only mirrors of you. Rule #8 - What you make of your life is up to you. Rule #9 - Your answers lie inside of you. Rule #10 - You will forget all this at birth.

Cherie Carter-Scott

There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it.

P. J. O'Rourke

Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now.

Aaron Broussard

Many people are allergic to process and structure because it causes traumatic flashbacks of working at BigCo and suffering through bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake.