Manmohan Singh Quotes

I defy anyone to get a decision that quickly these days.

The British civil service ... is a beautifully designed and effective braking mechanism.

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 defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.

Government technology processes are mind-boggling long and complicated. A procurement process alone is typically two years, and that doesn't account for the time required to actually build the product.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

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.

The minute you're working with the government, you're dealing with bureaucracy, you're dealing with time lags, you're dealing with rigidity, you're dealing with a slow pace.

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 will have an administrative system where there is no way to extricate red tape.

If you don't have the ability to work with local authorities, and confront corruption and tribal issues, then you'll fail.

For Christ’s sake, quit being bureaucrats.

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

I confess to a prejudice against officialism and a dread of bureaucracy.

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

If Columbus had an advisory committee, he would probably still be at the dock.

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

I'm not a musical theatre person, and I never will be, especially after seeing the way it operates. It's so incredibly inefficient. It takes three weeks to effect a change. It can be a lighting change, a script change, a musical change - you have to meet with six different departments, and about a month later, it may happen.

In Sydney, it's not sustainable to have 41 council entities.

The thing about local government is they want to hear what local people think, but for the most part, their systems are so long, dull and bureaucratic that people only get involved when there's an issue they really care about.

When you have to wait 10 and 15 years for an approval and then you don't even get the approval, it's no good.

You know, you try to move the Brussels bureaucracy, and unless you have some capacity to really break it, you can't move it. It just sits there and stares at you.

All right. Normal rules apply." "Right." The man walked off, leaving us. "What are the normal rules?" I asked. "He walks away and has a tea break and doesn't ask any questions.

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

It takes our government an awful lot of time to do most things competently, and that's part of the problem here.