One can imagine the look the two lovers exchanged; it was like a flame, for virtuous lovers have not a shred of hypocrisy.
Honore De BalzacRead
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the inefficiency and ineptitude often found in large bureaucratic systems.
Honore De Balzac's statement, 'Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies,' highlights the disconnect between the vastness of bureaucratic institutions and the often limited vision and capabilities of the individuals who manage them. It suggests that while these organizations are complex and expansive, they are frequently run by underqualified people, leading to inefficiency and a lack of innovation.
Themes
BureaucracyInefficiencyCritiqueManagementSystems
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about company politics, one might say, 'Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies' to express frustration over unqualified leadership.
More from Honore De Balzac
All quotes βLoyalty in time of need is possibly one of the noblest of victories a courtier can win over himself.
Honore De BalzacRead
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
Honore De BalzacRead
Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?
Honore De BalzacRead
However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the stress of passion, achieve heights of eloquence, in thought if not in language, and seem to move in some luminous sphere. Goriot's voice and gesture had at this moment the power of communication that characterizes the great actor. Are not our finer feelings the poems of the human will?
Honore De BalzacRead
Love is a religion, and its rituals cost more than those of other religions. It goes by quickly and, like a street urchin, it likes to mark its passage by a trail of devastation.
Honore De BalzacRead
Similar quotes
When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.
SocratesRead
In the act of worship itself, the experience of liberation becomes a constituent of the community's being . . . It is the power of God's Spirit invading the lives of the people, "building them up where they are torn down and propping them up on every leaning side".
James H. ConeRead
I project myself out through the glasses and across the street, a ghost in the morning sunlight, torn with disembodied lust.
William S. BurroughsRead
Looking for God-or Heaven-by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters.
C. S. LewisRead
The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.
B. H. Liddell HartRead
Several times I asked myself, "Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone?" And I searched for an answer to my questions in every area of knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on my painstaking search; I did not search casually, out of mere curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying man seeking salvation. I found nothing.
Leo TolstoyRead