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Bureaucrat Quotes

Wry lines about rules, red tape, and bureaucrats.

These bureaucrat quotes use the word with a wry, skeptical edge - the bureaucrat as a symbol of red tape standing between people and their freedom, doctors, or patients, rather than a specific policy debate.

For small community banks and credit unions, like those in Central and Northern Wisconsin, the hundreds of new rules will require an estimated 2,260,631 labor hours just for compliance. Those are hours that your local bank or credit union will...

Quotes by Sean Duffy

You can lead a bureaucrat to water, but you can't make him think.

Quotes by Ric Keller

The idea was never for me to be a career bureaucrat or career technocrat; it was more about where I could implement ideas and reform programs.

Quotes by Raghuram Rajan

A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about.

Quotes by Newt Gingrich

Ability Quotes

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

Quotes by Milton Friedman

I don't want anybody between a doctor and a patient - not an insurance company bureaucrat or a Washington bureaucrat.

Quotes by John Barrasso

The fate of your paycheck, the fate of your small business should not rest on what side of the bed a Washington bureaucrat wakes up on.

Quotes by Jeb Hensarling

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.

Quotes by Gore Vidal

I'd like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company.

Quotes by Chuck Schumer

About Quotes

It is outrageous to know that security procedures are apparently so lax at the Department of Veterans Affairs that a single bureaucrat had the ability to put the personal information of over 26 million Veterans at risk for sale to...

Quotes by Bob Ney

There's no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw.

Quotes by Bill Gates

Roy was just another bureaucrat to me, but I realized very soon that without Roy this thing would have died.

Quotes by Ben Shahn

Being a bureaucrat means never having to say you're sorry.

Quotes by Ben Domenech

What can I do if everyone from the president to a junior bureaucrat is dying to convict me. If I am such a criminal, what was I doing outside jail before my marriage to Benazir?

Quotes by Asif Ali Zardari

Ale Quotes

Le Carre's voice - patrician, cold, brilliant and amused - was perfect for the wilderness-of-mirrors undertow of the Cold War, and George Smiley is the all-time harassed bureaucrat of spy fiction.

Quotes by Alan Furst

Frequently Asked Questions

What tone do these bureaucrat quotes take?
A wry, skeptical one - each quote uses "bureaucrat" as shorthand for impersonal rules and red tape rather than describing any specific policy or party.
Do the quotes name any specific government or party?
No, they refer generally to bureaucrats and regulation - one specifically frames the concern as an insurance company bureaucrat or a Washington bureaucrat coming between a doctor and patient.
Is there a quote about compliance costs for small banks?
Yes, one describes new rules requiring an estimated 2,260,631 labor hours of compliance work for small community banks and credit unions.
Is there a lighter, more humorous quote in the mix?
Yes - "Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned" plays on a familiar saying to poke fun at bureaucratic pettiness.
What's the connection to beach volleyball in one quote?
That quote uses beach volleyball's grassroots origin as an example of something no bureaucrat would have invented, framing it as a case for freedom over top-down planning.

For more on institutions and rules, see Ability and About quotes, which sit near this theme in the topic index.