Bureaucratic Failure Quotes

Everything government touches turns to crap.

There is an apocalyptic view to this that is actually kind of appealing, which is the only way to kill big government is to let it kill itself. It's suicide by gluttony. Right now, the government is approaching Fat Elvis during those years in the '70s right before he croaked on the toilet seat. Basically ObamaCare is a huge tray of bacon and banana sandwiches. And it could happen in our lifetimes.

Big government doesn't work! It just doesn't work!

The intelligence bureaucracy is in a pathological state of dysfunction, and has been for decades. To fix the critical problems, we need to face them in a serious and thoughtful way. Neither party has done that well at all.

It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence.

What typically happens in government is the exact opposite of how things should work.

The more things a government undertakes to do, the fewer things it can do completely. When the government tries to do everything it must do everything badly.

Amateur bureaucrats are often even worse than professional bureaucrats.

No centralized bureaucracy, or so-called "paternal government," yet invented on earth, has been anything but a failure, or is it like to be anything else

It is indefensible that IRS Commissioner Koskinen has not been held accountable for failing to meet his legal obligations. This is exactly what the American people are tired of when they say that our government is on the wrong track.

The government - they're completely useless.

Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today. So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency, give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot.

One book that I heard was circulating the Green Zone was "Bureaucracy Does Its Thing" by Robert Komer , who worked for President [Lindon] Johnson in Saigon. This book is about the inevitably of screwing up when a country takes on a war with so little understanding of the country they are fighting.

I have found in my years of working in the government than when I face a choice of explanations of venality or incompetence in explaining some government activities, it is almost always incompetence that explains it. It often appears to be venality because we do not realize how incompetent government and large private organizations can be sometimes.

If you put government in charge of a desert, soon there will be a shortage of sand.

Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy.

I've always been fond of the saying that when it comes to oversight and reform, the federal government does two things well: nothing and overreact.

The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American Policy makers.

As with most things governmental, failure does not mean having to try something else. It means spending more money.

It's an absolute abomination. Whether intentional corruption or mismanagement , it seems like FEMA is just a money pit.

I'm not sure when exactly it started to become the fashion in Westminster to skim-read documents, only bother with bullet points or, worse, to take them entirely on trust - but that, perhaps, was when we began as a country to lose our way.

There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse.

No government proposal more complicated than "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" ever works.

There is no lack of bravery in the ranks of our armed forces, but bureaucratic cowardice rules in our intelligence establishment (as well as at the higher levels of military command).

There is no remedy for the inefficiency of public management.