“Curiously enough, commentators on American political institutions have never produced a systematic analysis of our administrative system except from the point of view of the lawyer. Until the last few years even the text books have obstinately closed their eyes to this enormous terrain, studded with governmental problems of first magnitude and fascinating interest; and even today they dismiss the subject with a casual chapter. But certainly no one pretends that administration can still be put aside “as a practical detail which clerks could arrange after doctors had agreed upon principles."”

Source: Introduction to the Study of Public Administration, 1926, p. ix: Preface, lead paragraph

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Leonard D. White18

American historian 1891–1958

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Preview; lead paragraph
The Administrative State, 1948

“Although the decisions of the American Courts are of course not binding on us, yet the sound and enlightened views of American lawyers in the administration and development of the law—a law, except so far as altered by statutory enactment, derived from a common source with our own—entitle their decisions to the utmost respect and confidence on our part.”

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet (1802–1880) Lord Chief Justice

Scaramanga v. Stamp (1880), L. R. 5 Com. PI. Div. 303.

“Our universities produced lawyers and doctors for the old social system, but did not create enough agricultural extension teachers, agronomists, chemists, or physicists. In fact, we do not even have mathematicians.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Speech to University students (1959)

“It is absolutely true that I have served in two Democratic administrations. You can tell something from me and my political views from that.”

Elena Kagan (1960) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Senate Confirmation Hearing, reported in " Elena Kagan under fire from Republicans http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/jun/29/elena-kagan-barack-obama-supreme-court", The Guardian (29 June 2010).

“Within the past ten years there have appeared with increasing frequency books, articles, conferences, and monograms dealing with system engineering, system analysis, system design, the systems approach, the design of systems, system theory, and problems of systems engineering. The number of publications and the stature of their authors does not allow the dismissal of the subject as a passing fad. The breadth of engineering activity involved in even a cursory examination of recent publications is of interest… It is therefore obvious that whatever Systems Engineering may or may not be, it is non-sectarian and encompasses activities that are of concern in all phases of engineering. On the other hand undergraduate college offerings akin to Systems Engineering are rather limited and even graduate programs are not extensive.”

Allen B. Rosenstein (1920–2018) American systems engineers

Source: Systems engineering and Modern Engineering Design (1965), p. 1.

“[ Lawyers are clear. On the one hand, they are important and deserve] special consideration [because they] are always found at the right hand of the administrator whose actions must be legally defensible. A lawyer, therefore, sits close to the seat of administrative authority… Policy may have to yield to constitutionality, and the lawyers prescribe. On the other hand, it must be said that the training of the lawyer, based on precedent, and looking backward rather than forward for guidance, is not a training which is suited to make an ideal administrator.”

Leonard D. White (1891–1958) American historian

Leonard D. White (1935), Government Career Service, p. 46, as cited in: Moynihan (2009)

“The [George W. ] Bush administration and the conservatives must stop promoting American popular culture because it is producing a blowback of Muslim rage. With a few exceptions, the right should not bother to defend American movies, music, and television. From the point of view of traditional values, they are indefensible. Moreover, why should the right stand up for the left's debased values? Why should our people defend their America? Rather, American conservatives should join the Muslims and others in condemning the global moral degeneracy that is produced by liberal values.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Introduction, p. 26
Books, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left And its Responsibility for 9, 11 (2007)

“While 800,000 Americans wait and work without pay, the administration bows to mortgage industry lobbyists. The blatant corruption and greed of an administration who puts banks above people is the root cause of our broken system.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

(12 January 2019) https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1084199593926189057 <br class="br">Twitter account, January 2019

“The book rest upon tour assumptions. It assumes that administration is a - single process, substantially uniform in its essential characteristics whether observed and therefore avoids the study of municipal administration, state administration, or federal administration as such. It is assumed that the study of administration should start from the base of management rather than the foundation of law, and is therefore more absorbed in the affairs of the American Management Association than in the decisions of the courts. It assumes that administration is still primarily an art but attaches importance to the significant tendency to transform it into a science. It assumes that administration has become, and will continue to be, the hart of the problem of modern government.”

Leonard D. White (1891–1958) American historian

Source: Introduction to the Study of Public Administration, 1926, p. ix

“It is in the development of further administrative coordination that we must come to political scientists for aid. We ask that you apply to the field of economic administration the technique of analysis and principles of organization which you have developed in the study of administrative organization in the form of the state.”

Gardiner C. Means (1896–1988) American economist

Source: "The Distribution of Control and Responsibility in a Modern Economy", 1935, p. 64

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Leonard D. White18

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