bureaucratic quotes

Any society, so long as it is, or feels itselfto be, a working society, tends to invest in itself: a military society tends to become more military, a bureaucratic society more bureaucratic, a commercial society more commercial, as thestatus and profits of waroroffice orcommerceare enhanced by success, and institutions are framed to forward it. Therefore, when such a society is hit by a general crisis, it finds itself partly paralyzed by the structural weight of increased social investment. The dominant military or official or commercial classes cannot easily change their orientation: and their social dominance, and the institutions through which it is exercised, prevent other classes from securing power or changing policy.

-Glanton
  The Rise of Christian Europe.

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

- BarbaraW(ertheim) Tuchman
  Stilwell and theAmerican Experience in China, pt.1, ch.1.