James F. Byrnes Quotes

One of the enduring truths of the nation's capital is that bureaucrats survive.

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

The civil service are risk averse.

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government job.

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

Governments are not like a business. They don’t look like a business, work like a business, think like a business, and they don’t have a bottom line.

They work for bureaucracies and they become bureaucratized themselves.

The State is a collection of officials, different for difference purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats.

There are more agriculture bureaucrats than there are farmers in this country.

The stuff that's good is the stuff that lives on.

Sometimes I feel frustration at the bureaucracy for not moving fast enough to deliver in the way that I would prefer. But that is probably because I have worked for many years in the civil society, which tends to move much faster than government.

When we like our new rulers we call them public servants. When we are mad at them we call them bureaucrats; but it is the business of self-government to see that they remain servants of the public instead of becoming its masters.

The Navajo Nation spends most of its time jumping through hoops.

I had a nightmare: A surplus of bureaucracy in a country which just liquidated illiteracy.

When we consider that this government is charged with the external and mutual relations only of these states; that the states themselves have principal care of our persons, our property, and our reputation, constituting the great field of human concerns, we may well doubt whether our organization is not too complicated, too expensive; whether offices or officers have not been multiplied unnecessarily, and sometimes injuriously to the service they were meant to promote.

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

Superfluous bureaucracies and the system of file-keeping and paper-shuffling that is enforced by them … are totally alien to Islam

The Civil Service rewards those who do no more than sit at their desks and say no.

Those of you who end up in public service will come to appreciate the difficulty of wielding the extraordinary power of the government effectively and fairly. Much of this power is housed in the many departments and agencies that are charged with carrying out specific functions of government. Those who do not have daily interactions with a government agency may not realize just how much influence bureaucracies wield.

This is why I hate governments. It is always the rule, the fine print, carried out by the fine print men. There's nothing to fight, no wall to hammer with frustrated fists.

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.

Presidents may go to the seashore or to the mountains. Cabinet officers may go about the country explaining how fortunate the country is in having such an administration, but the machinery at Washington continues to operate under the army of faithful non-commissioned officers, and the great mass of governmental business is uninterrupted.

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

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.