QuoteProject
Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'Rourke
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote criticizes how government proposals are often hindered or mismanaged by bureaucracy, leading to negative consequences for the public.

P. J. O'Rourke highlights the disconnect between government intentions and bureaucratic processes. He suggests that while the government may put forth innovative or necessary proposals, the bureaucratic machinery often stifles these ideas, ultimately burdening citizens instead of benefiting them. This commentary reflects a skepticism towards the effectiveness of bureaucratic systems in realizing the goals of governance.

Themes

GovernmentBureaucracyProposalsPublicPolitics

In practice

Example use cases

In a political debate about government inefficiencies.

More from P. J. O'Rourke

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
I spend my days kneeling in the muck of language, feeling around for gooey verbs, nouns, and modifiers that I can squash together to make a blob of a sentence that bears some likeness to reason and sense.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it. The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.
P. J. O'RourkeRead

Similar quotes

The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets' which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us. These are already pre-digested, and then are sicked up as little gobbits of authorised spew. The columns of defense correspondents in the establishment sheets serve as the spittoons.
E. P. ThompsonRead
Public buildings, built from the rates and taxes paid by past generations, are being auctioned off by impoverished councils who need the money to pay the redundancies of workers they can no longer afford to employ. Many of these grand Victorian buildings will be turned into flats that most people will never be able to afford.
David OlusogaRead
Even as someone who's labeled a conservative - I'm a Republican I'm black, I'm heading up this organization in the Reagan administration - I can say that conservatives don't exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they're welcome.
Clarence ThomasRead
Australia can no longer afford to go down the path of confrontation and fragmentation which has embittered and disfigured so many aspects of the national life.
Bob HawkeRead
You just don't, in the 21st century, behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text.
John F. KerryRead
You can suddenly have a series of countries waking up and saying, 'I want the same status as the Brits,' which will be, de facto, the dismantling of the rest of Europe.
Emmanuel MacronRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.