Tom Ridge Quotes

The last thing we need to do now is reorganize and create a new department.

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 a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

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.

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.

The bureaucracy is what we all suffer from..

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.

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.

I ... can sniff out a bureaucracy when I see it coming [in new legislation.]

It is a huge bureaucracy. It is so inept. But it does function.

For some time past I have conscious that I was wasting my own time and the public money on doing work that produces no result.

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.

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.

Huge organizations and me don't get along. They're too inflexible, waste too much time, and have too many stupid people.

Only to bureaucrats can the idea occur that establishing new offices, promulgating new decrees, and increasing the number of government employees alone can be described as positive and beneficial measures.

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.

Bureaucracy gives birth to itself and then expects maternity benefits.

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

Well, you could take several stories off the buildings of most U.S. government agencies and we'd all probably be better for it too.

We'll always have bureaucracies, but bureaucracies led by bureaucrats might be too much of a bad thing.

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

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