This was the mark of an uncommon soldier, someone whose courage away from the battlefield was the same as that on it.

Collins and Morales represent a segment of society which, if attacked with the weapons society sanctions, one finds buffered by innumerable layers of law, bureaucracy, lies, evasions. They rest secure within their palaces, confident that...

After Napoleon’s 1815 defeat at Waterloo, Europeans had created nation-states in the image and likeness of Napoleon. The new states became the foci of popular affection, even worship. All organized themselves as Napoleon had France,...

Some third person decides your fate: this is the whole essence of bureaucracy.

Ah. You know, people like you, Ogu, really have no idea what the real India is like. Especially you – South Delhi is such a vulgar place, and your only companion there is Pultukaku, you...

Sports bureaucracy in the United Kingdom has to be greatly reduced.

Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in...

for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have.

German businessmen are overwhelmed by the high cost of doing business. Inflexible rules, enforced by a burgeoning bureaucracy, discourage entrepreneurship.

Very often the test of one’s allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument...

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and...

Plato argued that good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will always find a way around law. By pretending that procedure will get rid of corruption, we...

If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won’t.

We have to be careful about the administrative costs of bureaucracy … if we expect to compete in the global marketplace.

Widespread commercial distribution of ice was so new that 300 tons of the precious commodity melted at one port while customs officials tried to figure out how to classify it.

private loans will utilize existing resources and capital far better than government loans. Government loans will waste far more capital and resources than private loans. Government loans, in short, as compared with private loans, will...

One major concern with regions is that it would create an extra level of bureaucracy and establish a kind of silo effect and various little fiefdoms responsible for a variety of cross cutting activities.

One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred ‘experience’ on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main ‘experience’...

This, not incidentally, is another perfect setting for deindividuation: on one side, the functionary behind a wall of security glass following a script laid out with the intention that it should be applied no matter...

Uniformity in the common law, consisting of broad principles like the “reasonable person” standard, generally permits adjustment for the circumstances. This type of uniform principle is almost synonymous with fairness. Uniform application of a detailed...

The obvious pollution occurring in many places – worst of all, in the planned societies- has encouraged the growth of the environmental movement, which, however, as shown in previous chapters, has an agenda that goes...

An “attack on SeaWorld” might mean a bomb, or it might mean graffiti and glitter and a cream pie in the face. The government doesn’t always seem to distinguish between the two.

In our time… a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more...

The petite bourgeoise and small property in general represent a precious zone of autonomy and freedom in state systems increasingly dominated by large public and private bureaucracies.

The greatest power of bureaucracies is to make the smart act stupid and the good to act evil.

Nearly every parent on earth operates on the assumption that character matters a lot to the life outcomes of their children. Nearly every government antipoverty program operates on the assumption that it doesn’t.

Devil take you? That, in fact, can be done!” And—bang!

Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters...

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

rivals in the bureaucracy, both inferior and superior to him.