Bureaucracy Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old bureaucracy quotes, bureaucracy sayings, and bureaucracy proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients. Alan Keyes
Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it. Joseph A. Schumpeter
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. Oscar Wilde
The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork. Alain De Botton
Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy, but an inevitable complement to it. Joseph A. Schumpeter
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. Jerry Pournelle
Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible. Javier Pascual
Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is dehumanized, the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation. Max Weber
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty. Eugene J. McCarthy
Paperwork is the embalming fluid of bureaucracy, maintaining an appearance of life where none exists. Pobert Meltzer
The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. Karl Marx
Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. Mary Mccarthy
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies. Honoré de Balzac
A bureaucrat is an official who is clothed with power and whom it doesn't fit. Evan Esar
A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business. Walter Bagehot
Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress. James Boren
There's so much kind of bureaucracy involved with the whole concept of net neutrality and like technical stuff. Terry Gross
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status. Laurence J. Peter
Bureaucracy is a huge beast; deeply rooted, it exists even among artists; it's an almost losing battle against it. Dejan Stojanovic
Bureaucracy gives birth to itself and then expects maternity benefits. Dale Dauten
The bureaucracy takes itself to be the ultimate purpose of the state. Karl Marx
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. Franz Kafka
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. Oscar Wilde
Bureaucracy by its nature resists change and nullifies progress. James Cook
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility. Brooks Atkinson
Bureaucracy is like a fungus that contaminates everything. Jaime Lerner
Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy. Charles Peters
In any bureaucracy, there's a natural tendency to let the system become an excuse for inaction. Chris Fussell
Bureaucracies tend to grow and to brag about their growth based on how many individuals they have and how much money they spend. Darrell Issa
On soviet bureaucrats: They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you hate. Boris Pasternak
If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't. Hyman Rickover
To be a corporation, a board of directors is required, though there's mighty little agreement about what directors are supposed to do. Malcolm Forbes
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Thomas Jefferson
One of the enduring truths of the nation's capital is that bureaucrats survive. Gerald Ford
It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence. Edna O' Brien
The inner spirit of bureaucracy lies in the exciting interplay of non-ideas and the effervescent sparkling of human personalities engaged in nondirective pursuits. James H. Boren
It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results. Walter Bagehot
Where there is officialism every human relationship suffers. E.M. Forster
Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held. Aldous Huxley
A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world. John Le Carre
The concept of the 'official secret' is its bureaucracy's specific invention. Max Weber
The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take. C. Northcote Parkinson
The accumulation of laws and bureaucracy over time weighs heavily on all of us. Don't destroy the government, use it. Will Marshall
Some civil servants are neither servants nor civil. Winston Churchill
If there's anything a public servant hates to do, it's something for the public. Kin Hubbard
Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it. Joseph Schumpeter
I think the only government of which the human race is capable is more or less efficient or corrupt bureaucracy. The degrees of efficiency and corruption are what make the difference. Northrop Frye
Bureaucracy is the death of any achievement. Albert Einstein
Bureaucracies are designed to perform public business. But as soon as a bureaucracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy. Brooks Atkinson
Fight hierarchy and bureaucracy as hard as you possibly can. Don't ever let it become the master; always remember it's the servant. Herb Kelleher
The best way to put the federal bureaucracy back on a leash is to make it obey the laws the people write. Josh Hawley
The bureaucracy always goes with the way politicians go. Yogi Adityanath
As a bureaucracy becomes more established, it develops its own career structure. It is less dependent and should be less dependent, on individual personalities. Absolutely no one is indispensable. John Scarlett
I understand how bureaucracies work. And that's important because our government has become a vast, huge, bloated, corrupt bureaucracy. Carly Fiorina
An official man is always an official man, and he has a wild belief in the value of reports. Arthur Helps
Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling. Robert A. Heinlein
Bureaucracies force us to practice nonsense. And if you rehearse nonsense, you may one day find yourself the victim of it. Laurence Gonzales