's Quotes

"There is a field, namely, the handling of the apparatus of government, in which bureaucratic methods are required by necessity. What many people nowadays consider an evil is not bureaucracy as such, but the expansion of the sphere in which bureaucratic management is applied. This expansion is the unavoidable consequence of the progressive restriction of the individual citizen's freedom, of the inherent trend of present-day economic and social policies toward the substitution of government control for private initiative", Bureaucracy (1945)

"It is a euphemism to call a government in which the rulers are free to do whatever they themselves believe best serves the common weal a welfare state, and to contrast it with the state in which the administration is bound by law and the citizens can make good in a court of law their rights against illegal encroachments of the authorities. This so-called welfare state is in fact the tyranny of the rulers", Bureaucracy (1945)

"The only alternative to the determination of market prices by the choices of all consumers is the determination of values by the judgment of some small groups of men, no less liable to error and frustration than the majority, notwithstanding the fact that they are called 'authority'. No matter how the values of consumers' goods are determined, whether they are fixed by a dictatorial decision or by the choices of all consumers - the whole people - values are always relative, subjective, and human, never absolute, objective, and divine", Bureaucracy (1945)

"He who wants to reform his countrymen must take recourse to persuasion. This alone is the democratic way of bringing about changes. If a man fails in his endeavours to convince other people of the soundness of his ideas, he should blame his own disabilities. He should not ask for a law, that is, for compulsion and coercion by the police", Bureaucracy (1945)

"It has been frequently objected that this orientation of economic activity according to the profit motive, i.e., according to the yardstick of a surplus yield over costs, leaves out of consideration the interests of the nation as a whole and takes account only of the selfish interests of individuals, different from and often even contrary to the national interests. This idea lies at the bottom of all totalitarian planning", Bureaucracy (1945)

"The pre-eminence of the capitalist system consists in the fact that it is the only system of social co-operation and division of labour which makes it possible to apply a method of reckoning and computation in planning new projects and appraising the usefulness of the operation of those plants, farms, and workshops already working. The impracticability of all schemes of socialism and central planning is to be seen in the impossibility of any kind of economic calculation under conditions in which there is no private ownership of the means of production and consequently no market prices for these factors", Bureaucracy (1945)

"The capitalist system of production is an economic democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. The consumers are the sovereign people. The capitalists, the entrepreneurs, and the farmers are the people's mandatories. If they do not obey, if they fail to produce, at the lowest possible cost, what the consumers are asking for, they lose their office. Their task is service to the consumer. Profit and loss are the instruments by means of which the consumers keep a tight rein on all business activities", Bureaucracy (1945)

"People are unfair in indicting the individual bureaucrat for the vices of the system. The fault is not with the men and women who fill the offices and bureaux. They are no less the victims of the new way of life than anybody else. The system is bad, not its subordinate bureaux", Bureaucracy (1945)

"In all countries all tax laws are to-day written as if the main purposes of taxes were to hinder the accumulation of new capital and the improvements which it could achieve. The same tendency manifests itself in many other branches of public policy. The 'progressives' are badly off the mark when they complain about the lack of creative business leadership. Not the men are lacking but the institutions which would permit them to utilize their gifts. Modern policies result in tying the hands of innvoators no less than did the guild system of the Middle Ages", Bureaucracy (1945)

Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are no schools for creativeness. A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made. He does not owe anything to the favour of those in power. But, on the other hand, the government can bring about conditions which paralyse the efforts of a creative spirit and prevent him from rendering useful services to the community", Bureaucracy (1945)