If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.
—Charles Kettering
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
—Laurence J. Peter
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
—Brooks Atkinson
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
There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function.
—Georges Clemenceau
Whether the mask is labeled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat, our great adversary remains the Apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier or the battle lines,… but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.
—Simone Weil