George Orwell Quotes

It is easier to waste time on bureaucratic reorganization than it is to accomplish anything concrete.

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.'

Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving—how not to do it. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart.

Waste your money and you're only out of money, but waste your time and you've lost a part of your life.

The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.

Wasting time is something that people do or feel all over the world, not just in Italy.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.

A committee is an animal with four back legs.

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

There are certainly delays in this year's agreed program, and we must quickly catch up. Let's not kid ourselves, there is still big waste in the public sector, and it must stop.

There's no good way to waste your time. Wasting time is just wasting time.

I am one of the great wasters of time. I have made it an art form. I can get up at 8 o'clock in the morning, be out of the house by 8:30 and back by 5 P.M., and I'll be going all day long and accomplish absolutely nothing. It's an amazing talent.

I do not want to waste any time. And if you are not working on important things, you are wasting time.

… procuring offices for persons who were unfit, and unworthy of them … squandering away the public treasure

We may well doubt whether our organization is not too complicated, too expensive; whether offices and officers have not been multiplied unnecessarily and sometimes injuriously to the service they were meant to promote.

One family should not have to have five case managers to get help from one state agency.

The squandering of the public money sinks into comparative insignificance as a temptation to corruption when compared with the squandering of the public lands.

Have you ever noticed that it’s only the public sector that complains about too many customers.

The best … Committees consist of three persons, two of whom are always absent!

The moment approaches when we shall no longer be able to pay cash for shipping and other supplies.... I believe that von will agree that it would be wrong in principle and mutually disadvantageous in effect, if at the height of this struggle, Great Britain were to be divested of all saleable assets so that after victory was won with our blood, civilization saved, and time gained for the United States to be fully armed against all eventualities, we should stand stripped to the bone. Such a course would not be in the moral or economic interests of either of our countries.... You may be assured that we shall prove ourselves ready to suffer and sacrifice to the utmost for the Cause, and that we glory in being its champion. The rest we leave to you and to your people, being sure that ways and means will be found which future generations on both sides of the Atlantic will approve and admire.

In a corporate state, all attempts to reduce bureaucracy increase it.

The bureaucracy needs to do more than one thing at a time. It’s appropriate to save people with helicopters, but it can’t be done to the exclusion of everything else.

Unproductive effort is never a good thing.

It's frustrating when you're not getting the job done.