Tom Hodgkinson Quotes

My father was very much a handy person round the house, and I learnt a lot of carpentry from him.

It must be a source of great chagrin to those in charge to think of so many people being able to stick a stamp on a letter and drop it in a mail box without any trouble or suffering at all. They are probably working on a system this very minute, trying to devise some way in which the public can be made to fill out a blank, stand in line, consult some underling who will refer him to a superior, and then be made to black up with burned cork before they can mail a letter.

You do not need to have a 2,400-page bill come out of Washington, D.C.

I could build and roof a house, though electricity is not my thing.

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.

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.

The bureaucracy is what we all suffer from..

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

The immigration process is so unbelievably complicated and expensive and endless!

You want a kitchen put in, I'm your girl. I'm very handy, and I love a practical challenge. I fit all the stereotypes of the lesbian with power tools.

Anyone with an engineering frame of mind will look at [accounting standards] and want to throw up.

And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.

But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.

If Franz Kafka were alive today he'd be writing about customer service.

You cannot paint the exterior of your house. You have to take the paint chip down to show the paint-chip Nazis.

One listens to one's lawyer prattle on as long as one can stand it and then signs where indicated.

We bury the men who do the nation's creative work under layers of administrators and mountains of memoranda. We shrivel creativity by endless frustrations.

It's like ten thousand spoons, when all you need is a knife.

They're on you day and night. Their oversight is just too extreme [. . .] That's why our 10-year loan, we paid it back in three years. We couldn't stand the government. The bureaucracy kills 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.

Those who can do. Those who can't form a supercommittee.

The question nowadays is not what makes government work. The question is how do we make it stop.

(I'm) the only one to take out half a brain, although you would think, if you go to Washington, that someone had beat me to it.

The weight of the old world is stifling, and trying to shovel its weight off your life is tiring just to think about. The constant shuttling of opinions is tiring, and the shuffling of papers across desks, the chopping of logic and the trimming of attitudes. There must, somewhere, be a simpler, more violent world.

People usually survive their illnesses, but the paper work eventually does them in. Filing a claim for insurance is terminal.