I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
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By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
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I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of 'Admin.' The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
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Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public Records to be true.
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I always get back to the question, is it really necessary that men should consume so much of their bodily and mental energies in the machinery of civilized life? The world seems to me to do much of its toil for that which is not in any sense bread. Again, does not the latent feeling that much of their striving is to no purpose tend to infuse large quantities of sham into men's work?
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Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
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In the US we find the label requirements are crazy. It is almost as if we had to label a bookcase with the warning 'do not eat this bookcase -- it can be harmful to your health'.
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The consistent anarchist should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat. Some sort of council communism is the natural form of revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the intuitive understanding that democracy is largely a sham when the industrial system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite, whether of owners, managers, and technocrats, a vanguard party, or a State bureaucracy.
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A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state.
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We cannot meet it the threat of dictatorship if we turn this country into a wishy-washy imitation of totalitarianism, where every mans hand is out for pabulum and virile creativeness has given place to the patronizing favor of swollen bureaucracy.
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Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
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It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the earth can sustain, and that human civilization will collapse when the number of, say, tax lawyers exceeds the world's total population of farmers, weavers, fisherpersons, and pediatric nurses.
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Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy
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Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
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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.
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Poor fellow, he suffers from files.
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The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.
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The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.
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Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
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Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.
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A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office a Republican wants.
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The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.
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Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses.
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There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
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The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.
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If the copying machines that came along later had been here during the war, I'm not sure the allies would have won. We'd all have drowned in paper.
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If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.
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If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy; God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won t.
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If the first person who answers the phone cannot answer your question it's a bureaucracy. If the first person can answer your question, it's a miracle.
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To get the attention of a large animal, be it an elephant or a bureaucracy, it helps to know what part of it feels pain. Be very sure, though, that you want its full attention.
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