Florence Nightingale Quotes
… a man remarkable even among civil servants for adroitness in baffling inconvenient inquiries, resource in raising false issues, and, in, short, a consummate command of all the arts of officially sticking in the mud
First woman to receive the British Order of Merit. Nightingale was a great and prolific writer, and nothing attracted her ire worse than bureaucracy. See {614057}.
Florence Nightingale, 1820-1910, English Nurse Description of Sir Benjamin Hawes, 1797-1862, Permanent Under-Secretary at the War Office
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
First woman to receive the British Order of Merit. For a man to so criticize the War Office would have been very “cheeky” at the time, but for a woman to do so was unheard of. Her characterization of bureaucracy, in a cabinet level department is as good a description of bureaucracy as any since. See {614056} for her castigation of the chief bureaucrat.
At the time, Civil Service jobs were all appointed and the government employees could be fired at will regardless of whether the did their jobs well or not. The President and the Cabinet members spent huge amounts of time dealing with people looking for appointments (“place”)
and hearing complaints from civil servants who had been fired unjustly. Two years later, Congress passed the legislation. See 1.
The new director was faced with 2,600 personnel vacancies in this critical office and the jobs were not getting filled quickly. Many people who are appointed to high Federal Office and come from the private sector or state and local government, are appalled at the extensive and cumbersome bureaucracy that makes the hiring of Federal employees so tedious and slow.
Roosevelt was then one of the 3 Civil Service Commissioners of the Harrison administration.
Kennedy’s pro Nazi and pro Hitler stance and statements when Ambassador to England, destroyed him politically in the United States. However, we transferred his political ambition to his sons, and JFK became the first Catholic President of the United States.
This quotation is an excellent example of the attitude of many upper class Englishmen towards the United States in the early part of the 19th century. With the notable exception of Ben Franklin, American Science was undeveloped, and the arts were equally unrefined. However, in assessing the United States, nothing was more derogatory than American Slavery which was totally primitive and barbaric by sophisticated European standards. What is amazing about this quotation was its truth and accuracy which shows us the amazing American development that the United States underwent in the next hundred years when it would be equal to any nation on earth. The American freedom, the abolition of slavery and the brilliance of welcoming immigrants from the world to help develop the free nation produced the greatest country on Earth.
Czar Nicholas II was a relative of Queen Victoria and her uncle, King Leopold. They were both skilled and popular monarchs. In contrast, the Czar was not only hated by his own people, but as this private letter shows, was not thought very well of by his own more accomplished relatives and fellow monarchs. Nicholas II was so bad, that he was the last of the Czars as the Communist Russian Revolution forced him to abdicate and then he was murdered.
3rd Earl Russell of Kingston
Gates was then a mid-level functionary at the CIA. His ability to tell the truth to powerful people got him promoted and he eventually became director himself as well as the Secretary of Defense. The Department of Agriculture at the time was generally known as a very bureaucratic organization.
He was describing his first government experience as a a civil servant of the Department of Agriculture in the New Deal. The political party affiliation is not so critical today for most civil service posts but there are about 10,000 positions where party affiliation is very critical.
Blair was then the leader of the opposition Labor party. Major, the prime minister, did not have firm control of his own party and was whipsawed between different factions. He was ousted by his own party, not by losing an election.
Lord Dunsmore was John Murray, 1732-1809, the Royal Colonial Governor of Virginia who was one of the least competent of the British officials in Colonial America.
Only 6 years after the Russian Revolution Lenin was already being perceived as an international provocateur and instigator of problems.
- Born: May 12, 1820
- Died: August 13, 1910
- Nationality: British
- Profession: Activist
Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC, DStJ was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, in which she organised care for wounded soldiers at Constantinople. She gave nursing a favourable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of "The Lady with the Lamp" making rounds of wounded soldiers at night.
