James Q. Wilson Quotes

Developing countries often have hypertrophied bureaucracies, requiring businesses to deal with enormous amounts of red tape.

We can get rid of red tape.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

The bureaucracy is what we all suffer from..

When we're worried about a bureaucracy and keeping the bureaucracy going, you're always going to make mistakes.

NASA, like every government organization, has some bureaucracy, which can become slimmer.

The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

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.

Bureaucracy is like a fungus that contaminates everything.

It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.

We have this idea of bureaucracy in local government, and it's generally things that we're frustrated at. It doesn't work the way we like it to work.

Civil servants take forever to do anything.

Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

Amateur bureaucrats are often even worse than professional bureaucrats.

When we ask bureaucrats to identify who is responsible for fixing anything, they reassure us that there are 'procedures in place.'

There's something about dealing with government agencies that makes you feel like a criminal.

Or the Department of Education and another ministry were worried about duplication of effort, so what did they do? They set up two committees to look into duplication and neither knew what the other was up to. It really is a world beyond parody.

Should bureaucratic ways prevail and paper reign supreme? Should red tape and the Status Quo become our nation’s dream?

It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results.

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

People complain about bureaucracy. You haven't seen bureaucracy until you've seen bureaucracy in China.

Almost everything the government runs becomes mediocre in time ... bureaucracy leads to mediocrity.

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.

You can't fire anybody in Government; everyone blames the system. Look what is happening in NASA. Now we have to truck out these 200-plus audits out of the closet because we had a disaster [the Challenger], and we still can't find someone to fire.