Administrative Delay Quotes

A question like the present should he disposed of without undue delay. But a State cannot he expected to move with the celerity of a private business man; it is enough if it proceeds, in the language of the English Chancery, with all deliberate speed.

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.

Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.

The information I requested under the Freedom of Information Act has been blocked for two years.

I wish twenty-four hours, a good night's sleep and a day spent in the open air could always elapse before any government officials take action on matters of grave importance.

I think that for anybody who has worked in the civil society, government bureaucracy moves very very slowly.

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.

… a man remarkable even among civil servants for adroitness in baffling inconvenient inquiries, resource in raising false issues, and, in, short, a consummate command of all the arts of officially sticking in the mud

America is a grateful nation. We cannot allow anything or anyone to get in the way of that. The words 'veteran' and 'backlog' should never appear in the same sentence.

In government and out, there are vast realms of the bureaucracy dedicated to seeking more information, in perpetuity if need be, in order to avoid taking action.

Civil servants take forever to do anything.

How many twenty-second-century bureaucrats did it take to change a light panel? We'll have a sub-committee meeting and get back to you with an estimate.

The War Office is a very slow office, an enormously expensive office, and one in which the Minister's intentions can be entirely negated by all his sub-departments, and those of each of the sub-departments by every other.

I have very little hope that any permission can be gained for your organization. However, I shall place it in a special folder with similar applications and raise the question from time to time with such people here as may have authority.

So it was sort of an odd time because I had been hired, but my paperwork hadn't gone through. So I worked as an intern during the government shutdown, as an intern, but I already had a job.

They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

During my seven years and eight months as chief Cabinet secretary, I noticed that when policies are slow to move forward, it's usually because of bureaucrats' sectionalism and a penchant for sticking with precedents.

Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.