"To complain of lack of leadership is, in the field of political affairs, the characteristic attitude of all harbingers of dictatorship. In their eyes the main deficiency of democratic government is that it is unable to produce great Führers and Duces", Bureaucracy (1945)
"No profit-seeking enterprise, no matter how large, is liable to become bureaucratic provided the hands of its management are not tied by government interference. The trend toward bureaucratic rigidity is not inherent in the evolution of business. It is an outcome of government meddling with business. It is a result of the policies designed to eliminate the profit motive from its role in the framework of society's economic organization", Bureaucracy (1945), p.20
"The main issue in present-day political struggles is whether society should be organized on the basis of private ownership of the means of production (capitalism, the market system) or on the basis of public control of the means of production (socialism, communism, planned economy). Capitalism means free enterprise, sovereignty of the consumers in economic matters, and sovereignty of the voters in political matters. Socialism means full government control of every sphere of the individual's life and the unrestricted supremacy of the government in its capacity as central board of production management. There is no compromise possible between these two systems. Contrary to a popular fallacy there is no middle way, no third system possible as a pattern of a permanent social order", Bureaucracy (1945), p.18
"It is true that the office-holders are no longer the servants of the citizenry but irresponsible and arbitrary masters and tyrants. But this is not the fault of bureaucracy. It is the outcome of the new system of government which restricts the individual's freedom to manage his own affairs and assigns more and more tasks to the government. The culprit is not the bureaucrat but the political system. And the sovereign people is still free to discard this system", Bureaucracy (1945), p.17
"It would not substantially impair the power of the bureaucrats, if they were under the necessity of approaching Parliament for legislating on all these matters. Parliament would be flooded by a multitude of bills the contents of which would extend beyond the range of its competence. The Members of Parliament would lack both the time and the information to examine seriously the proposals elaborated by the staffs of the various agencies", Bureaucracy (1945), p.16
"Those who criticize bureaucracy make the mistake of directing their attacks against a symptom only and not against the seat of the evil. It makes no difference whether the innumerable decrees regimenting every aspect of the citizen's economic activities are issued directly by a law, duly passed by Parliament, or by a commission or government agency to which power has been given by a law and by the allocation of money. What people are really complaining about is the fact that the government has embarked upon such totalitarian policies, not the technical procedures applied in their establishment", Bureaucracy (1945), p.15
"It is a fact that the policies which resulted in the establishment of the bureaucratic system were supported by the majority of the Members of Parliament", Bureaucracy (1945), p.14.
"The champions of totalitarianism call themselves 'progressives' precisely because they pretend to have comprehended the meaning of the portents [inexorable progress towards socialism]. And they ridicule and disparage as 'reactionaries' all those who try to resist the working of forces which - as they say - no human effort is strong enough to stop. Because of these 'progressive' policies new offices and government agencies thrive like mushrooms. The bureaucrats multiply and are anxious to restrict, step by step, the individual citizen's freedom to act", Bureaucracy (1945), p.13
"There cannot be any doubt that this bureaucratic system is essentially anti-liberal, undemocratic, and contrary to the spirit of the traditional British system of parliamentary government, and that it is a replica of the totalitarian methods of Stalin and Hitler. It is imbued with a fanatical hostility to free enterprise and private property. It paralizes the conduct of business and lowers the productivity of labour. By heedless spending it squanders the nation's wealth. It is inefficient and wasteful. Although it styles what it does planning, it has no definite plans and aims. It lacks unity and uniformity; the various bureaux and agencies work at cross-purposes. The outcome is a disintegration of the whole social apparatus of production and distribution. Poverty and distress are bound to follow", Bureaucracy (1945), p.12, paraphrasing an "adequate although emotional description" of trends in Anglo-Saxon government.
"No kind of rule is endured so easily or accepted so gratefully as that of high-minded and highly educated civil servants. The German State is a State of the supremacy of officialdom - let us hope that it will remain so", quoted in Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy (1945), p.9