Bureaucratic Tasks Quotes

The protocol things, the officialdom, are part of my work. But it doesn't take more than 20 percent of my time. The majority of my time I spend on issues that I care about.

In government, you're not a writer, you're an administrator.

I don't really understand how to do bureaucratic things - school-system things.

Scientific apparatus offers a window to knowledge, but as they grow more elaborate, scientists spend ever more time washing the windows.

To the teacher weighed down with paperwork, I say: you've been messed around too often. You came into teaching to spend your time teaching children not filling in forms.

In the academic world, most of the work that is done is clerical. A lot of the work done by professors is routine.

Although it is the biggest time-waster in office life, you must never underrate the importance of the memo. You will be judged by the volume of your paper work.

I'm not proud of this at all, but I'm someone who has relied on business managers and accountants and career managers to run the whole bureaucratic side of my life for the last 16 years, so anything, from filing tax returns to paying credit card statements, is something that I feel rather fortunate to have been out of the loop on.

I don't need a job. I don't want an appointment. I don't want to be on a commission. I don't want to be ambassador to nowhere.

A lot of times I make people better by getting stupid, distracting, bureaucratic stuff off their desk. That's an incredibly easy way to make a senior person more productive.