Naveen Jain Quotes

I understand how bureaucracies work. And that's important because our government has become a vast, huge, bloated, corrupt bureaucracy.

Everybody who goes into government gets somewhat chewed up in the process. Being a senior appointee is like being at a startup, only more so: You run into opposition from the entrenched oligopoly of contractors whose business model is to extract as much money from government as possible for doing as little as possible.

I can't help thinking if she - the director of a government agency - is this ignorant about what funding is available and where the money comes from - how often lower-level bureaucrats must give wrong answers when people are looking for help to start a business.

Delay has the odor of the Beltway.

Lacking a profit motive, workers in the government by and large have a different work ethic from those in private industry. When they could make one call, federal workers take a meeting. When they could find an answer on the Internet, they form a study committee. Instead of appointing one supervisor, they appoint five.

People need to understand that in Washington, the process is the punishment.

When I visit local communities, people often complain that they need the approval of several dozen government departments to get something done or to start a business, and people are quite frustrated about this.

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.

I look over a problem and decide what to do. No sooner have I sent out an instruction than it’s overridden by the White House or leaked to the press, or a call comes in from some Congressional staffer irately challenging what we are doing. In business, when we decided to do something, we did it. In government, nothing ever gets settled.

The government generally is just too top-heavy.

One thing about bureaucrats is that they never swallow their young. Leave them alone and you'll find them increasing every year.

Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.

There's a smokestack on the back of every government program.

It's that government bureaucracies crush innovation. We are falling further and further behind in our government.

The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.

I understand why so many Americans are fed up with government. The 112th Congress was almost universally derided as the worst ever. It was the most polarized body since the end of Reconstruction, according to one study, and I grew embarrassed by its partisan bickering, inactivity, and refusal to address the vital challenges facing America.

Folks, this government isn't too big to fail, it's too big to succeed.

Big government is indeed big, and like another big creature, the sauropod dinosaur, government has a primitive nervous system: The fact of an injury to the tail could take nearly a minute to be communicated to the sauropod brain.

Washington is not a geographical entity, it is a state of mind.... People understand how Cleveland works. They even understand how New York City works, but they can't figure Washington out.

There's a can't-do attitude in this town [Washington DC] that I haven't seen anywhere else ... It's like running through a field of marshmallows in terms of getting anything done.

The instruments of state prove too big to do the small things and too small to do the big things.

Getting the U. S. Government to do anything is like herding ducks with a broom.

Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies — unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand — unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.

The major functions of the government are … operated by deeply embedded, hopelessly entangled bureaus where nothing is accomplished because the function of the bureau is to intercept every living idea and smother it.

I want you to learn nothing from government. This place is dead intellectually. It does not produce any ideas; it is all about turf battles and checking the box. Your job is to break through all this.