"Bureaucracy is the business of controlling other humans, making them do what you want them to do. That may be acceptable if what you are asking them to do is reasonable, rational and for the common good, but more likely what bureaucrats ask is treasonable, nonsensical and counterproductive to the public good. This is because the primary business of a bureaucrat, left unchecked, is creating more bureaucracy to further his or her own prestige and power. The result is that rules are in place serving no function but to keep bureaucrats in work and to expand their bureaucratic fiefdom. Before you know it you can't even hold a village fete without filling out more than fifteen different forms from various arms of the government."
React to this quote
More by Heather Brooke
See allResonant Thoughts
"In America, the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever. Fortunately, in America journalism has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a na…"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"ye and I might meet with joy up in the rainbow"
— Samuel Rutherford"A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six; he might like to have it; b…"
— Adam Smith"Often it has been that reporter who has most skillfully played the access game — the one who has curried ju…"
— Margaret Sullivan (journalist)"So the future depends not only on what we do but on what other powers do. Will they join in the nuclear arm…"
— Maxwell D. Taylor"We'll find him," Stackhouse said. Because if we don't, he thought, I'm toast. This whole place might be toast."
— Stephen King"There is no getting around authority and power, and no getting around the intellectual's relationship to th…"
— Edward Said
