“It is a government agency. And government agencies are run as bureaucracies. There is a role for bureaucracy; it’s very useful for certain tasks. In particular, it facilitates standardization and interchangeability. Bureaucracies excel at performing tasks that must be done consistently whether the people assigned to them are brilliant performers or bumbling fools. You can’t always count on having Albert Einstein in the patent office, so you design its procedures to work even if you hire Mr. Bean by mistake.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 13, “Fimbulwinter” (pp. 258-259)

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 "It is a government agency. And government agencies are run as bureaucracies. There is a role for bureaucracy; it’s very…" by Charles Stross?
Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross 211
British science fiction writer and blogger 1964

Related quotes

Isaac Leib Peretz photo

“As victors, you may become the bureaucracy: doling out to each his bit as in a poorhouse, assigning to each his task as in a prison.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Hofnung un Shrek, 1906. S. Liptzin. Peretz. Yivo, 1947, p. 279.
Context: I fear you. As victors, you may become the bureaucracy: doling out to each his bit as in a poorhouse, assigning to each his task as in a prison. And you will exterminate the creator of new worlds,—the free human will, and stop up the purest well of human happiness—the power of the one to face thousands, to stand up to peoples and generations.

Ronald Reagan photo

“You can't be for big government, big taxes, and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Campaign rally for V.P. George H.W. Bush, San Diego California (7 November 1988), as quoted in Common Sense of an Uncommon Man https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1400324203, Thomas Nelson Inc. (2014), Jim Denney & Michael Reagan, 'Bureaucracy and Bureaucrats'
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

Herbert Hoover photo

“Bureaucracy is ever desirous of spreading its influence and its power. You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people's souls and thoughts.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover (1928), Campaign speech in New York (22 October 1928)
Context: Bureaucracy is ever desirous of spreading its influence and its power. You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people's souls and thoughts. Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation's press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.

“The task will be more fruitfully performed if the citizen, and his agents in public offices, understand the ecology of government.”

John M. Gaus (1894–1969) American political scientist

Source: Reflections on public administration, 1947, p. 19

Robert Sheckley photo

“Remember, the inevitable inefficiency of a huge bureaucracy will be working for you.”

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 20 (p. 84)

John R. Bolton photo
Jack Kerouac photo
Harry Browne photo
Heather Brooke photo

“The first thing is that you’re always at a disadvantage, because a bureaucracy is funded by the public to have permanent people there who can relentlessly advocate for their own interest. And that’s the problem: when bureaucracy stops working for the public interest.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

International Journalism Festival http://www.journalismfestival.com/news/heather-brooke-antitrust-legislation-needed-to-keep-the-internet-free/ Interview with Fabio Chiusi, 12 April 2012.
Attributed, In the Media

Related topics