Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Where self-interest is violently suppressed, it is replaced by a burdensome system of bureaucratic control which dries up the wellsprings of initiative and creativity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Suppressing self-interest stifles creativity and initiative, leading to bureaucratic control.
In this quote, P. J. O'Rourke highlights the negative impact of suppressing individual self-interest, suggesting that when people are not allowed to pursue their own interests, it creates a heavy and ineffective bureaucratic system. This system removes the personal drive and creativity that individuals can bring, ultimately harming innovation and initiative within any organization or society.
Themes
Self-InterestCreativityBureaucracyInitiativeControl
In practice
Example use cases
A speech on the importance of entrepreneurship at a business conference.
More from P. J. O'Rourke
All quotes βAlways 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
Similar quotes
Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.
Walter BenjaminRead
but that mimosa grove - the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since." "this then is my story. i have reread it. it has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies. at this or that twist of it i feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than i care to probe.
Vladimir NabokovRead
Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.
Aldous HuxleyRead
You don't understand, you fool' says Yegor, looking dreamily up at the sky. 'You've never understood what kind of person I am, nor will you in a million years... You just think I'm a mad person who has thrown his life away... Once the free spirit has taken hold of a man, there's no way of getting it out of him.
Anton ChekhovRead
The sheer folly of trying to defend a nation by destroying all life on the planet must be apparent to anyone capable of rational thought. Nuclear capability must be reduced to zero, globally, permanently. There is no other option.
Queen Noor Of JordanRead
If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable.
Horace MannRead