Top 225 Bureaucratic Quotes & Sayings

Having worked my way from the bottom of the ladder to the top [of the UN] certainly helped me navigate that complexity, both political and bureaucratic.

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

The bureaucratic method of building an integrated Europe has exhausted its potential.

Today's public education system is a failed monopoly: bureaucratic, rigid and in unsteady control of dissatisfied captive markets.

I think institutions that are bureaucratic often try to squeeze from the top down, and they don't have good results on the ground level.

A fully developed bureaucratic mechanism stands in the same relationship to other forms as does the machine to the non-mechanical production of goods. Precision, speed, clarity, documentary ability, continuity, discretion, unity, rigid subordination, reduction of friction and material and personal expenses are unique to bureaucratic organization.

No private enterprise will ever fall prey to bureaucratic methods of management if it is operated with the sole aim of making profit.

Sometimes being an artist is a real drag. It can be incredibly bureaucratic.

In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work.

Brussels has become inefficient and very bureaucratic, which makes it slow to do things. The concept of the United States of Europe will never work.

Where self-interest is violently suppressed, it is replaced by a burdensome system of bureaucratic control which dries up the wellsprings of initiative and creativity.

Bureaucratic nonsense at airports drives me crazy.

The danger is that the compromises and special interests inherent in Kyoto-style targets and cap-and-trade will be accepted because of bureaucratic momentum.

The whole evolution of present-day society tends to develop the various forms of bureaucratic oppression and to give them a sort of autonomy in regard to capitalism as such.

Many veterans in Mississippi struggle with the bureaucratic process of the Veterans Administration.

[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don't care about culture.

Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.

I'm really excited by science and technology and the whole social media thing. I think it's fascinating. But at the same time I'm wary of bureaucratic systems and managers.

I am not a creature of giant business and I think that small- and medium-sized businesses will derive the most benefit from the removal of bureaucratic obstacles to trade.

In the bureaucratic machine of socialism the way toward promotion is not achievement but the favor of the superiors.

America is a nation of immigrants. And so the question is, how do we make legal immigration faster, less bureaucratic, cut the red tape?

We need to get rid of all remnants of bureaucracy and bureaucratic thinking, and start thinking like entrepreneurs again.

Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.

An innocent bureaucratic snafu.

The worst law is better than bureaucratic tyranny.

Once you have an equalization instrument in place, as you have in Canada, there arise tremendous bureaucratic values - bureaucratic rent so to speak - in maintaining the system that you have. To shift to a system that paid the transfers directly to individuals, by having differential rates of federal income tax levied to adjust to provincial fiscal capacities, which would be my preference, you would have huge bureaucratic opposition. People would try to protect the rents they have in the current system of institutions.

Deeper state intervention in an economy means that bureaucratic waste, inefficiency and corruption are more likely to hold back growth.

The home ownership process for Native Americans has been hobbled by bureaucratic delays and regulations.

In 1966, NASA took over in space, and it has been a bureaucratic mess ever since.

OFSTED has made large cuts in the paperwork which schools are asked to provide and further steps to reduce the bureaucratic burden will be introduced in September.

The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.

The fully developed bureaucratic apparatus compares with other organisations exactly as does the machine with the non-mechanical modes of production.

American [public] schools are failing because they are organized according to a bureaucratic, monopolistic model; their organizing principle is basically the same as that of a socialist economy.

From the outside, the CIA seems pretty exotic, but from the inside, it's a big bureaucratic place. Think 'post office with spies.'

From the outside, the CIA seems pretty exotic, but from the inside, it's a big, bureaucratic place. Think 'post office with spies.'

The high-handed bureaucratic excesses of the IRS are a national disgrace ... riding roughshod over the taxpayers and making a joke out of our rule of laws.

Europe certainly needs a genuine conservative movement to combat the creeping bureaucratic collectivism that is stifling the human potential of the Continent.

Turner Broadcasting went from a very entrepreneurial, risk-taking company where I had a tremendous amount of freedom and autonomy to a corporate, bureaucratic nightmare.

The Japanese press likes me a lot, but the problem is the Japanese government. It's very bureaucratic.

The difference between architecture and engineering comes in only with the creation of schools. It's a bureaucratic distinction. The result of both disciplines is the construction of objects in a landscape.

Over-seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureaucratic thinking. People who are seriously committed to mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up.

Too often, nonprofits are viewed as rigid and bureaucratic - less nimble and capable of adapting in this fluid environment than our corporate counterparts. I don't agree.

I will make utmost efforts to conduct regulatory reform by tearing down bureaucratic sectionalism, vested interests and notorious habit of following precedents.

We need to call what is happening out of Washington, D.C., what it is: Bureaucratic terrorism: If you want a list of stories, I could go through a bunch of them, and I could highlight a few: One of them was the IRS audit of my good friend Phil Hart, he's sitting in the audience today. That was bureaucratic terrorism.

There's lots of things that can be solved with cash. And there's occasional things that can't be solved with cash, which become a bureaucratic nightmare for some reason, and there's no distinction between the two. There's no way of reading a situation and saying, "Yes, that'll be a bureaucratic nightmare, but that one we'll be able to buy off." It just depends on the day, apparently.

The politics of Europe is unimaginative and bureaucratic.

You cannot underestimate the sharpness of people’s BS radar. They can spot a soulless, bureaucratic tactic a million miles away.

It is through states that the American people get the job done every day, often in spite of a deeply flawed bureaucratic federal government.

Socialism isn't a dirty word; it just means sharing. Really, it's just the bureaucratic arm of Christianity.

Violent extremism is going viral, but our response to it is moving at bureaucratic, sluggish speed.

The bureaucratic culture that we [Afghanistan] have inherited is an obstacle. Hierarchies may be extremely efficient for dealing with certain events, but they are not quick in responding to global, flexible networks.

Every Communist working in the mass movements should be a friend of the masses and not a boss over them, an indefatigable teacher and not a bureaucratic politician.

Unfortunately, we are finding the bureaucratic inefficiencies and red tape have a tendency to slow the efforts of individuals and communities working to rebuild.

Would-be adoptive parents have to struggle for years through a bureaucratic obstacle course at an average cost of $30,000.

It's very complicated when you are reorganizing territories under different ministries. We have to get them all together and transfer jurisdictions. It's a bureaucratic slalom course we have to ski through, but it can be done.

[The Clinton health care initiative is] washed-over old-time bureaucratic liberalism, or centralized bureaucratic socialism.

Housing is a human right, not a bargaining chip to let fall between bureaucratic cracks.

Since governmental quotas expand bureaucratic power, provoke a backlash and are unfair to individuals, we need to find a better way to increase minority opportunities.

The biggest challenge is adding the bureaucracy it takes to run the company without becoming fat, lazy, inflexible - bureaucratic.

I don't really understand how to do bureaucratic things - school-system things.