Some bureaucracy quotes I've bumped into:
In Beyond Culture by Edward T.Hall
By their very nature bureaucracies have no conscience, no memory, and no mind.
Jerry Weinberg (in person)
Bureaucracy can be measured by how much people don't know why they're doing what they're doing.
In Good to Great by Jim Collins
The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline. Avoid bureaucracy and instead create a culture of discipline.
In First Order Measurement by Jerry Weinberg
Bureaucracy is each thing in control, but everything is out of control.
In John Boyd - the fighter pilot who changed the art of war
Anything new and different is feared by a bureaucracy.
In A Little Book of f-Laws by Russell Ackoff and Herbert Addison
A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say 'no' but none to say 'yes'.
In the Mind of war by Grant T. Hammond
he was always testing the limits - of airplanes, people, science, the military, and, most especially, bureaucracies.
In Ackoff's Best by Russell Ackoff
The most variety-decreasing type of social system is one we call a bureaucracy.
In Are your lights on? by Jerry Weinberg
Bureauracies always begin with some process of selection - a process which is never quite "natural" selection.
In Quality software management: Volume 2 First order measurement by Jerry Weinberg
Bureaucracy: people doing things whose purpose they don't understand.
