“Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pigmies, came into the world.”

— Honoré de Balzac

Les Employés http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Employ%C3%A9s [The Government Clerks] (1838), translated by James Waring; also known as Bureaucracy, or, A Civil Service Reformer.
Context: As routine business must always be dispatched, there is always a fluctuating number of supernumeraries who cannot be dispensed with, and yet are liable to dismissal at a moment's notice. All of these naturally are anxious to be "established clerks." And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pigmies, came into the world. Possibly Napoleon retarded its influence for a time, for all things and all men were forced to bend to his will; but none the less the heavy curtain of Bureaucracy was drawn between the right thing to be done and the right man to do it. Bureaucracy was definitely organized, however, under a constitutional government with a natural kindness for mediocrity, a predilection for categorical statements and reports, a government as fussy and meddlesome, in short, as a small shopkeeper's wife.

Original

Le courant des affaires devant toujours s'expédier, il surnage une certaine quantité de commis qui se sait indispensable quoique congéable à merci et qui veut rester en place. La bureaucratie, pouvoir gigantesque mis en mouvement par des nains, est née ainsi. Si en subordonnant toute chose et tout homme à sa volonté, Napoléon avait retardé pour un moment l'influence de la bureaucratie, ce rideau pesant placé entre le bien à faire et celui qui peut l'ordonner, elle s'était définitivement organisée sous le gouvernement constitutionnel, nécessairement ami des médiocrités, grand amateur de pièces probantes et de comptes, enfin tracassier comme une petite bourgeoise.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pigmies, came into the world." by Honoré de Balzac?

Honoré de Balzac 157

French writer 1799–1850

Related quotes

“Bureaucracy and culture are incompatible. Bureaucracy needs power, and culture is not wanted by it.”

Vasil Bykaŭ (1924–2003) Belarusian writer

1989. Source: [Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power: The Post-Stalin Era, Vladimir Shlapentokh, 2014, 22, 9781400861132, Princeton University Press]

“a network of powerful bureaucracies”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

How Civilizations Fall

“The centralized state power that is peculiar to bourgeois society came into being in the period of the fall of absolutism. Two institutions are most characteristic of this state machine: bureaucracy and a standing army.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

2.2, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
(1917)

“You have the power to change the world and your only fear should be wasting the opportunity while you have the time to wield it.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Future Proofing You (2021)

“Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Context: Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts, and all Roosevelt's friends know that his restless and combative energy was more than abnormal.

“The dirty little secret is that Congress no longer wants the accountability that goes with the wielding of power.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

Aung San Suu Kyi book Freedom from Fear

Source: Freedom from Fear (1991)
Context: It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. Most Burmese are familiar with the four a-gati, the four kinds of corruption. Chanda-gati, corruption induced by desire, is deviation from the right path in pursuit of bribes or for the sake of those one loves. Dosa-gati is taking the wrong path to spite those against whom one bears ill will, and moga-gati is aberration due to ignorance. But perhaps the worst of the four is bhaya-gati, for not only does bhaya, fear, stifle and slowly destroy all sense of right and wrong, it so often lies at the root of the other three kinds of corruption. Just as chanda-gati, when not the result of sheer avarice, can be caused by fear of want or fear of losing the goodwill of those one loves, so fear of being surpassed, humiliated or injured in some way can provide the impetus for ill will. And it would be difficult to dispel ignorance unless there is freedom to pursue the truth unfettered by fear. With so close a relationship between fear and corruption it is little wonder that in any society where fear is rife corruption in all forms becomes deeply entrenched.