Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Intellectual power often leads to excessive bureaucracy.
In plain terms
When intellectuals rule, there are many supervisors and few workers.
What can you take from it?
Intellectual dominance creates inefficiency.

Where it applies

  • governance
  • organizational structure
  • political systems

Putting it to work

  • monitor administrative bloat
  • balance authority

Questions to consider

  • Who supervises the supervisors?
  • Is efficiency valued over ideology?

Another view

Not all supervision is ineffective.

More from Eric Hoffer

  1. There can be no freedom without freedom to fail. page 80, Buccaneer Books edition (1990) ISBN 0899667481 172 pages total

    Permalink to quote #85
  2. One would like to see mankind spend the balance of the century in a total effort to clean up and groom the surface of the globe - wipe out the jungles, turn de…

    Permalink to quote #87
  3. To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium. page 27, Buccaneer Books edition (1990) ISBN 0899667481 172 pages total

    Permalink to quote #84

Related quotes

  1. The power of administrative bodies to make finding of fact which may be treated as conclusive, if there is evidence both ways, is a power of enormous consequen…

    Charles Evans HughesCharles Evans Hughes quote #7
  2. A man who uses power to do evil is in theory judged to have been conscious of his acts and to be as fit for punishment as a perpetrator of premeditated murder.…

    John Ralston SaulJohn Ralston Saul quote #8
  3. All executive power - from the reign of ancient kings to the rule of modern dictators - has the outward appearance of efficiency.

    William O. DouglasWilliam O. Douglas quote #9