“Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.”

—  John Updike

Act I
Buchanan Dying (1974)

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American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, an… 1932–2009

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“Man is an animal, but a social animal. Society for its manifold blessings asks in exchange sacrifice and compromise. Concession is the world's walking gait. Fevers and hallucinations sweep over us, it is true; but be they permitted to infect the public body, slaughter shall result. Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Act I
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“So the thing I object to about government isn't its organizational feature. Organization has to be accomplished. It is the coercive nature of government organization. My argument is that we can organize better without coercion.”

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“Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization.”

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“Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

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Context: We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.

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“The higher the intellectual potential of people, the broader their tendency to self-organization, the more of its functions will be delegated by the government to other communities. Quite true is also the argument that the more responsibility and competence the government delegates to the society, the more is realized its ability to self-organization.”

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“One must permit his people the freedom to seek added work and greater responsibility. In my organization, there are no formal job descriptions or organization charts.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

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Context: One must permit his people the freedom to seek added work and greater responsibility. In my organization, there are no formal job descriptions or organization charts. Responsibilities are defined in a general way, so that people are not circumscribed. All are permitted to do as they think best and to go to anyone and anywhere for help. Each person is then limited only by his own ability.

“An organization can secure the efforts necessary to its existence, then, either by the objective inducements it provides or by changing states of mind. It seems to me improbable that any organization can exist as a practical matter which does not employ both methods in combination. In some organizations the emphasis is on the offering of objective incentives — this is true of most industrial organizations. In others the preponderance is on the state of mind — this is true of most patriotic and religious organizations.”

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“Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.”

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“The most wretched of all current trends is of course the mass extinction of organisms, which has been escalating for decades and is still increasing in magnitude.”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

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“My own principal interest lies in the sphere of industrial organization, which of all major forms of human organization is, in its present magnitude, the most modern. For this the reason is evident. The vast present-day units of industrial organization are products mainly of one creating factor, namely the technology of mass production, and this technology, born of the industrial revolution, has been almost exclusively an evolution of the last century. In contrast other major forms of human organization — the state, the church, the army — are as old as human history itself. Yet if we examine the structure of these forms of organization we shall find that, however diverse their purposes, the underlying principles of organization are ever the same.”

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