Bureaucrats Quotes

The why is what makes journalism an adult game. The why is what makes policy coherent and useful. The why is what transforms bureaucrats and foot soldiers and political leaders into viable instruments of rational and affirmative change. The why is everything and without it, the very suggestion of human progress becomes a cosmic joke. ~ David Simon

Take one famous example: arguments about property destruction after Seattle. Most of these, I think, were really arguments about capitalism. Those who decried window-breaking did so mainly because they wished to appeal to middle-class consumers to move towards global exchange-style green consumerism, and to ally with labor bureaucracies and social democrats abroad. This was not a path designed to provoke a direct confrontation with capitalism, and most of those who urged us to take this route were at least skeptical about the possibility that capitalism could ever really be defeated. Many were in fact in favor of capitalism, if in a significantly humanized form. Those who did break windows, on the other hand, didn't care if they offended suburban homeowners, because they did not figure that suburban homeowners were likely to ever become a significant element in any future revolutionary anticapitalist coalition. They were trying, in effect, to hijack the media to send a message that the system was vulnerable -- hoping to inspire similar insurrectionary acts on the part of those who might be considering entering a genuinely revolutionary alliance; alienated teenagers, oppressed people of color, undocumented workers, rank-and-file laborers impatient with union bureaucrats, the homeless, the unemployed, the criminalized, the radically discontent. If a militant anticapitalist movement was to begin, in America, it would have to start with people like these: people who don't need to ~ David Graeber

Since politicians and bureaucrats can rarely sign real contracts, the best way to prove you'll do something later is to do it now ~ Garett Jones

Weber also saw that a bureaucratic world contained risks. It produced increasingly powerful and autonomous bureaucrats who could be spiritless, driven only by impersonal rules and procedures, and with little regard for the people they were expected to serve. Weber famously warned that those who allow themselves to be guided by rules will soon find that those rules have defined their identities and commitments. ~ Michael Barnett

The best definition that I heard of that is that a bureaucrat is a Democrat who has a job that a Republican wants. ~ Alben W. Barkley

Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to end the debacle of putting the world's greatest care system in the hands of federal bureaucrats and putting those bureaucrats between an American citizen and her doctor. ~ Chris Christie

Our enemies are all those in league with imperialism - the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big Landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right wing may become our enemy and their left wing may become our friend - but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks. ~ Mao Zedong

The elites who direct the Western world, the over-credentialed 'experts', are pulling the wool over our eyes. They possess neither strategy nor mastery of analysis and are satisfied with tactics. The real problems are never investigated. The solutions are rhetorical or electoral. The good apostles, bureaucrats with MBAs from prestigious schools, are only masters of words. No improvement is in sight. The Golem's inexorable march continues. ~ Guillaume Faye

If we give the bureaucrats our children, we may as well give them everything else. ~ John Gresham Machen

Egypt: Where the Israelites would still be if Moses had been a bureaucrat. ~ Laurence J. Peter

The bureaucrat fell from the sky. ~ Michael Swanwick

Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty. ~ Ron Paul

Such bureaucrats can neither be hurried in their deliberations nor made to see common sense. Indeed, the very absurdity or pedantry of these deliberations is for them the guarantee of their own fair-mindedness, impartiality, and disinterest. To treat all people with equal contempt and indifference is the bureaucrat's idea of equity. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

And since when does Hell have royalty? I thought they were all bureaucrats." "Oh, sweetie," he says, patronizing. "That's cute." "What's cute?" "That you think celebrity children of powerful people aren't royalty." "Are you accusing me of being a Hilton?" I sputter. "Or a, a–" my head might explode, "Kardashian?" "The Hellish equivalent. ~ Eliza Crewe

I'm against big bureaucracy in Washington making health care decisions. I just have an aversion to bureaucrats. But it's not just government bureaucrats. I don't like HMO bureaucrats and insurance company bureaucrats either. ~ Gary Bauer

No Child Left Behind taught us that parents, teachers and state and local leaders are more suited to address students' needs than a one-size-fits-all accountability system developed by Washington bureaucrats. ~ John Kline

The Constitution is a limitation of the government, not on private individuals--that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government--that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens' protection against the government.

Instead of being a protector of man's rights, the government is becoming their most dangerous violator; instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and coercion in any manner and issue it pleases; instead of serving as the instrument of objectivity in human relationships, the government is creating a deadly, subterranean reign of uncertainty and fear, by means of nonobjective laws whose interpretation is left to the arbitrary decisions of random bureaucrats; instead of protecting men from injury by whim, the government is arrogating to itself the power of unlimited whim--so that we are fast approaching the stage of ultimate inversion; the stage where the government is "free" to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may only act by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of humanity, the stage of rule by brute force. ~ Ayn Rand

[I]f we care about our remaining liberties we must at some point draw a line in the sand and let politicians and bureaucrats know we will not tolerate further encroachment on our God-given rights to liberty. ~ Walter E. Williams

A BUSINESSMAN cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, He suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss.
A bureaucrat, forces you to obey his decisions, whether you agree with him or not ... If he makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; If he fails, He passes the loss on to you, in the form of heavier taxes. ~ Ayn Rand

Whether it's personal foibles or a bureaucrat's ego, the stubborn defence of stupidity is unforgivable. ~ Stewart Stafford

There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right. ~ Elinor Ostrom

Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats. ~ Thomas Sowell

The ball itself was for over a thousand people, about half of them game-players; the rest were mostly partners of the players, or officials, priests, officers and bureaucrats who ~ Iain M. Banks

Ten-year-old boys move differently than middle-aged women, who move differently than athletic guys, who move differently than government bureaucrats. ~ Brad Bird

I think everyone remembers how certain Russian bureaucrats used to work against the Ukrainian opposition; I think it is hard to drop old habits. ~ Yulia Tymoshenko

Commoners had to prostrate themselves before high-ranking chiefs. All the members of chiefly lineages, bureaucrats, and some craft specialists were freed from the work of food production. ~ Jared Diamond

Abraham Lincoln talked about a government of the people, by the people, for the people. What we now have is a government of the people, by the bureaucrats, including the legislators who have become bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats. ~ Milton Friedman

For once in his life, Norman has acted rather than gone to a meeting. And this is where it has landed him. ~ Paul Torday

Over the centuries, Chinese bureaucrats perfected the dark arts of emptiness to such an extent that when they deliver speeches these days, they often recite verbatim speeches that they have previously delivered, with the sparest of adjustments. ~ Evan Osnos

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status ~ Laurence J. Peter

No society has succeeded in abolishing the distinction between ruler and ruled ... to be a ruler gives one special status and, usually, special privileges. During the Communist era, important officials in the Soviet Union had access to special shops selling delicacies unavailable to ordinary citizens; before China allowed capitalist enterprises in its economy, travelling by car was a luxury limited to tourists and those high in the party hierarchy Throughout the 'communist' nations, the abolition of the old ruling class was followed by the rise of a new class of party bosses and well-placed bureaucrats, whose behaviour and life-style came more and more to resemble that of their much-denounced predecessors. In the end, nobody believed in the system any more. That, couple with its inability to match the productivity of the less bureaucratically controlled, more egoistically driven capitalist economies, led to its downfall. ~ Peter Singer

Bureaucrats and politicians, rather than making decisions, were responding to cues with automatic routines in order to get rewards such as promotions or reelection. ~ Charles Duhigg

When each of us is free to work out his own economic destiny, within the framework of the market economy, the institution of private property, and the general rule of law, we will all improve our economic condition much faster than when we are ordered around by bureaucrats. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Bureaucrats live on the fat of the land, while the rest of us stay skinny laboring to pay their salaries. ~ Charles E. McKenzie

Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Most young people have rebellious, anti-authoritarian impulses. They don't like being told what, when, or how to do something. It's ironic, then, that many of these same people embrace a system in which there would be far more regulations, many more bureaucrats micromanaging their lives, and far more rules and restrictions on how things can be done. ~ Glenn Beck

I used to believe the government was the answer to all our problems. But the ... government, I've concluded, is now aninsufferable jungle of self-serving bureaucrats. ~ Chet Huntley

To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It's a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works. ~ Ai Weiwei

What the hell is social justice? What sort of fool can imagine income equality as dictated by bureaucrats and government thugs? I dare anyone to attempt to explain those drug-inspired fantasies in meaningful terms. ~ Ted Nugent

United Nations needs reform to connect with world community beyond the boundary of high-level bureaucrats and politicians through cyberspace and other means to put itself at the heart of worldwide public needs, hopes, and fears. ~ Amit Ray

Bureaucrats sometimes do not have the correct information, while citizens and users of resources do. ~ Elinor Ostrom

Let anyone who believes that a high standard of living is the achievement of labor unions and government controls ask himself the following question: If one had a "time machine" and transported the united labor chieftains of America, plus three million government bureaucrats, back to the tenth century - would they be able to provide the medieval serf with electric light, refrigerators, automobiles, and television sets? ~ Ayn Rand

They read a little bit, write a little, and especially agree with themselves on important moves, important information, important awards, important writers that they plan to enthrone forever in history through a variety of memberships and numerous prizes awarded under the influence of top bureaucrats who know everything, not only about literature, but also about secret conspiracies, the Masons that lurk in every corner to crucify someone, steal someone's soul and sell it to an unknown devil, about whom only the chief bureaucrat possesses secret knowledge that he doesn't share; about history, ghosts, missing continents; about who said what to whom in confidence. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

If lawyers had followed the norm of no execution without trial, if doctors had accepted the rule of no surgery without consent, if businessmen had endorsed the prohibition of slavery, if bureaucrats had refused to handle paperwork involving murder, then the Nazi regime would have been much harder pressed to carry out the atrocities by which we remember it. Professions ~ Timothy Snyder

If entrepreneurs were running schools, instead of bureaucrats, schools would be teaching a lot more of the skills and mindsets found in this book. Since they're not, this book is a necessary antidote to a traditional college education. ~ Scott Banister

[B]ut once the bureaucrats sink their barbed pens into the lives of Indians, the paper starts flying, a blizzard of legal forms, a waste of ink by the gallon, a correspondence to which there is no end or reason. That's when I began to see what we were becoming, and the years have borne me out: a tribe of file cabinets and triplicates, a tribe of single-space documents, directives, policy. A tribe of pressed trees. A tribe of chicken-scratch that can be scattered by a wind, diminished to ashes by one struck match. ~ Louise Erdrich

Real education is about genuine understanding and the ability to figure things out on your own; not about making sure every 7th grader has memorized all the facts some bureaucrats have put in the 7th grade curriculum. ~ Aaron Swartz

Yes, I believe in school choice. Parents know far better than government bureaucrats what their children need from an education standpoint, and they should be permitted to make that choice. ~ Matt Salmon

Bureaucrats want bigger bureaus. Special interests are interested in whatever's special to them. These two groups bring great pressure to bear upon politicians who have another agenda yet:
to cater to the temporary whims and fads of the public and the press. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

The annals of official philosophy are populated by 'bureaucrats of pure reason' who speak in 'the shadow of the despot' and are in historical complicity with the State. They invent 'a properly spiritual…absolute State that… effectively functions in the mind.' Theirs is a discourse of sovereign judgment, of stable subjectivity legislated by 'good' sense, of rocklike identity, 'universal' truth, and (white male) justice. 'Thus the exercise of their thought is in conformity with the aims of the real State, with the dominant significations, and with the requirements of the established order. ~ Gilles Deleuze

Prior to passage of Obamacare, Americans spoke out against the individual mandate; they didn't want to change the health care they had; they didn't want a 3,000-page bill that empowered 15 Washington bureaucrats to decide the future of the doctor-patient relationship. ~ Fred Upton

Seen from the point of view of the particular group interests of the bureaucrats, every measure that makes the government's payroll swell is progress. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Had been equally obvious. The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organisers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists and professional politicians. These people, whose origins ~ George Orwell

How many twenty-second-century bureaucrats did it take to change a light panel?
We'll have a sub-committee meeting and get back to you with an estimate. ~ Peter F. Hamilton

There is a remarkably distinctive smell emitted by fearful bureaucrats. It is acrid, rank, and seems to cling to the clothing and the hair. Acting like a pheromone, it drives senior management to form small defensive herds from which to scream homicidally at middle management that they must not tell junior staff who can fix the problem what is going on because everything, including what has just been reported on the radio, is secret. ~ Peter Macinnis

The aristocrats and bureaucrats are dirty rats. ~ Ray Davies

The future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried, tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster. President Obama, your agenda is not new. It's not change, and it's not hope. ~ Rush Limbaugh

I was a woman in a man's world. I was a Democrat in a Republican administration. I was an intellectual in a world of bureaucrats. I talked differently. This may have made me a bit like an ink blot. ~ Jeane Kirkpatrick

On one of the most personal matters of our lives, our health care, President Obama would turn decision making over to government bureaucrats. He forced through Obama-care and I will repeal it. ~ Mitt Romney

Wouldn't it be better for the human spirit and for the soul of this nation to encourage people to accept more responsibility to care for each other rather than leaving those tasks to paid bureaucrats. ~ Ronald Reagan

I'd like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company. ~ Chuck Schumer

Why did God do it? or is there really a Devil who led to the Fall? Souls in Heaven said "We want to try mortal existence, O God, Lucifer said it's great!" - Bang, down we fall, to this, to concentration camps, gas ovens, barbed wire, atom bombs, television murders, Bolivian starvation, thieves in silk, thieves in neckties, thieves in office, paper shufflers, bureaucrats, insult, rage, dismay, horror, terrified nightmares, secret death of hangovers, cancer, ulcers, strangulation, pus, old age, old age homes, canes, puffed flesh, dropped teeth, stink, tears, and goodbye. Somebody else write it, I dont know how. ~ Jack Kerouac

People were growing resentful of bureaucrats whose first mission in life seemed to be protecting their own jobs by keeping expensive programs alive long after their usefulness had expired. They were losing respect for politicians who kept voting for open-ended welfare programs riddled with fraud and inefficiency that kept generation after generation of families dependent on the dole. And they were growing mistrustful of the self-appointed intellectual elite back in Washington who claimed to know better than the people of America did how to run their lives, their businesses, and their communities. ~ Ronald Reagan

When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats. ~ John Le Carre

The bureaucrats had gotten into a habit of solving every medical problem by building something so that a congressman could say, 'Here's what I did!' It didn't make any sense, but everybody did the same thing again and again. ~ Charles Duhigg

Democracy is dying. We are ruled by faceless bureaucrats and lecherous puritans ... You think about it. 'All right for me but not for you' is their philosophy. ~ Anne Stevenson

I joined the city government, and we start to operate as the bureaucrats on the local level, so we were the only ones in the whole Russian team who were experienced in practical bureaucratic management in the complicated condition of 1990. ~ Anatoly Chubais

Know thyself!" There is nothing that so aids and assists the awakening of omniscience within us as insistent thoughts about one's own transgressions, errors, mistakes. After the difficult cycles of such ponderings over many years, whenever I mentioned the heartlessness of our highest-ranking bureaucrats, the cruelty of our executioners, I remember myself in my captain's shoulder boards and the forward march of my battery through East Prussia, enshrouded in fire, and I say: "So were we any better?" When people express vexation, in my presence, over the West's tendency to crumble, its political shortsightedness, its divisiveness, its confusion - I recall too: "Were we, before passing through the Archipelago, more steadfast? Firmer in our thoughts?" And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: "Bless you, prison!"… (And from beyond the grave come replies: It is very well for you to say that - when you came out of it alive!) ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

When government 'creates jobs' by taking money from the private sector and 'investing' in favored projects, it is not truly productive activity. Rather, the government has preempted the economic process, forbidding it to serve consumers so that it can instead serve the objectives of politicians and bureaucrats. ~ Sheldon Richman

I don't believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not. And I don't believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care of not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives. ~ Mitt Romney

Many pioneers of these industrial changes, it is true, became rich. But they acquired their wealth by supplying the public with motor cars, airplanes, radio sets, refrigerators, moving and talking pictures, and variety of less spectacular but no less useful innovations. These new products were certainly not an achievement of offices and bureaucrats. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Never give a bureaucrat a chance to say no. ~ Morton Blackwell

In fact, the teenager's concept of "square" (f the term is still in use), when they talk about their parents, is almost identical to the concept of "cultural deprivation" as it is used by educational bureaucrats. In both cases it reflects an extremely self-centered and rigid way of looking at the world. Fortunately, with teenagers, it's a phase they grow out of. ~ William Ryan

The defeats, failures of the European proletariat in the mediocre positivism with which timid union bureaucrats and bland parliamentary teams cultivates a... lazy spirit in the masses. A proletariat without more of an ideal of than the reduction of work hours and a salary raise of the few cents will never be capable of grand historic entreprise. ~ José Carlos Mariátegui

It's all about intelligence; and intelligence comes down to a bunch of faceless bureaucrats sifting through all this crap. ~ Tom Clancy

They think that successful diplomacy requires years of experience and an understanding of all the nuances that have to be carefully considered before reaching a conclusion. Only then do these pinstriped bureaucrats consider taking action. ~ Donald J. Trump

The SAG was a strange three-legged beast equipped by civilian bureaucrats, administered by the police and staffed by the army. ~ Sandeep Unnithan

What we have now is democracy without citizens. No one is on the public's side. All the buyers are on the corporations' side. And the bureaucrats in the Administration don't think the government belongs to the people. ~ Ralph Nader

What shall we do, what shall we do! Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves is like out of the frying pan and into the fire! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Politicians, bureaucrats, editors, new commentators, 'economists' teachers,' and other word artists who denounce private enterprise and praise socialism are their own worst enemies ... these attackers are unwittingly destroying the sources of their own livelihood. They kill the geese that lay the golden eggs - and don't know it! ~ Leonard Read

As a result, amongst working-class Americans, government is now generally seen as being made up of two sorts of people: "politicians," who are blustering crooks and liars but can at least occasionally be voted out of office, and "bureaucrats," who are condescending elitists almost impossible to uproot. ~ David Graeber

There is nothing to guarantee the superior judgment, knowledge, and integrity of an inspector or a bureaucrat-and the deadly consequences of entrusting him with arbitrary power are obvious. ~ Alan Greenspan

There are people with vested interest who do not want us to reform our energy sector so that we remain dependent on imports. All reform moves are resisted. Bureaucrats are hesitant to take bold decisions. ~ Veerappa Moily

members of labor unions, and un-organized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers - themselves desparately afraid of being downsized - are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for - someone willing to assure them that once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen and post modernist professors will no longer be calling the shots...
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion... All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet pp89-90 ~ Richard M. Rorty

Most American Hispanics don't belong to one race, either. I keep telling kids that, when filling out forms, they should put "yes" to everything - yes, I am Chinese; yes, I am African; yes, I am white; yes, I am a Pacific Islander; yes, yes, yes - just to befuddle the bureaucrats who think we live separately from one another. ~ Richard Rodriguez

The lesson I learned in Cairo still applies. The only way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence. ~ Boutros Boutros-Ghali

In the dramas people shied from Shuos assassins and saboteurs, but the ones you had to watch out for were the bureaucrats. ~ Yoon Ha Lee

Monsters are entirely mythological, sir, like spirits, werebeasts, and competent bureaucrats. ~ George R R Martin

Collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of. ... By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it. ~ George Orwell

Think about that. Two hundred and eighty-five new or expanded programs, $2 trillion more in new spending, and not one new bureaucrat to file out the forms or answer the phones? ~ George W. Bush

Custine described them as 'automata inconvenienced with a soul': a description true, perhaps, of all bureaucrats fearful for their jobs but truest of all where power is both arbitrary and completely centralised, as it was in Russia. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

We'll always have bureaucracies, but bureaucracies led by bureaucrats might be too much of a bad thing. ~ John Sununu

Plato argued that good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will always find a way around law. By pretending that procedure will get rid of corruption, we have succeeded only in humiliating honest people and provided a cover of darkness and complexity for the bad people. There is a scandal here, but it's not the result of venal bureaucrats.
(1994) p. 99 ~ Philip K. Howard

Our view is that individuals and families can govern their lives better than bureaucrats. ~ Rick Perry

There was a problem: No one cared about human rights anymore, not at home or abroad. They cared about growth
hoped for and celebrated in all the newspapers, invoked by zealous bureaucrats in every self-serving television interview. On this matter, the filmmaker was agnostic
he came from money, and couldn't see the urgency. Like many of his ilk, he sometimes confused poverty (which must be eradicated!) with folklore (which must be preserved!), but it was a genuine confusion, without a hint of ill intention, which only made it more infuriating. ~ Daniel Alarcon

Science fiction lends itself readily to imaginative subversion of any status quo. Bureaucrats and politicians, who can't afford to cultivate their imaginations, tend to assume it's all ray-guns and nonsense, good for children. A writer may have to be as blatantly critical of utopia as Zamyatin in We to bring the censor down upon him. The Strugatsky brothers were not blatant, and never (to my limited knowledge) directly critical of their government's policies. What they did, which I found most admirable then and still do now, was to write as if they were indifferent to ideology - something many of us writers in the Western democracies had a hard time doing. They wrote as free men write. ~ Arkady Strugatsky

Politicians and bureaucrats are the new upper class in Norway. It is an upper class that is growing by an increasing number of top-paid politicians in municipalities and counties. They let the people suffer, but let themselves go free. ~ Carl I. Hagen

However ... ," Satan said.
Bick sighed. "However, I didn't count on the growing interference of lawyers, regulators, bureaucrats and politicians into my business. I swear it seems that every year they stick their noses into more and more."
Lucifer chuckled. "Sorry about that-I outdid myself there. ~ R.S. Belcher

This one,' said the hooded man, 'resists sorcery, Cotillion. Though his blood is old, I wonder, will all mortals one day be like him? An end to miracles. Nothing but dull, banal existence, nothing but mundane absence of wonder.' The cane jabbed. 'A world of bureaucrats. Mealy-minded, sour-faced and miserable as a reunion of clerks. In such a world, Cotillion, not even the gods will visit. Except in pilgrimage to depression. ~ Steven Erikson