Hyman Rickover Quotes

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

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.

The bureaucracy is what we all suffer from..

A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.

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

I can't help thinking if she - the director of a government agency - is this ignorant about what funding is available and where the money comes from - how often lower-level bureaucrats must give wrong answers when people are looking for help to start a business.

There is nothing quite so depressing as waking up to face a day when you know that you are going to have to deal with a government office or bureaucrat.

Governments take too long to get things done and there are far too many varied interests at stake. If you were starting a business today and needed a partner, you would never choose a large bureaucratic institution like the government.

Government is inherently incompetent, and no matter what task it is assigned, it will do it in the most expensive and inefficient way possible.

I understand how bureaucracies work. And that's important because our government has become a vast, huge, bloated, corrupt bureaucracy.

Big bureaucracies in business and government—they fail too.

Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.

America is fed up with political correctness, and it is fed up with government that doesn't work. It's fed up with weakness being interpreted as wisdom.

It's hard not to get down on the government when you see dysfunction play out on our TVs every day. Frankly, sometimes at every level of government.

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.

Anyone who's ever filed a tax return or visited the Department of Motor Vehicles understands that government does two things well: spend our money and waste our time.

Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling.

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.

The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.

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.

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.

Bureaucracy is adept at protecting its nest.

I think that in the West, many citizens, especially younger citizens, take their freedoms and institutions for granted and focus on their frustrations with their governments' inability to solve pressing problems.

Competence doesn't seem like a big deal until you are forced to realize that your own government has none.