The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted - or rather tend to be corrupted - by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people.

All great movements, every vigorous impulse that a community may feel, become perverted and distorted as time passes.

The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge.

Just as it is impossible to know when a swimming fish is drinking water, so it is impossible to find out when a government servant is stealing money.

They wouldn't let us into Russia. They thought we'd corrupt the youth or something.

The top entrusts the understanding of detail to the lower levels, whilst the lower levels credit the top with understanding of the general, and so all are mutually deceived.