Hugh Gaitskell Quotes

Now all politicians assume a necessity of control, the more efficient the control the better.

Generally I'm against regulation.

The policy is one thing, but it's dictated by what the process is.

We have seen a central government taking more and more control over public education, over communications, over transportation, over every detail of our daily lives.

A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than leave free the energies of mankind.

You can't, in a government agency, regulate everything that moves ... you can't regulate everything ... you must strike a balance.

Self regulation is important but it is not enough.

I do not dread these corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain and control them.

Every business action of the individual is supervised and hedged about with red tape and paternal restrictions.

When you are dealing with the United States Government and the Department of Justice you have to always be looking over your shoulder.

Modern administrative government springs from the inadequacy of a simple tripartite form of government to deal with modern problems …. It vests the necessary powers with the administrative authority it creates, not too greatly concerned with the extent to which such action does violence to the traditional tripartite theory of government organization.

I have been trying to understand the regulators.

Abu Mazen has deprived himself of all the practical authorities of government.

Many people feel that we need the rule of law to eliminate our problems. But is it more laws that we need? We have many laws - thousands upon thousands of them - but they are constantly being broken.

We think the government is running the country, but it is just a policymaker. Unknowingly, people are inviting the government to run their lives. The only business of the government is to come up with the right policies.

Precedents are dangerous things; let the rein of government then be braced and held with a steady hand.

History is on the side of the regulators.

I can't remember one [example of regulation] that's good. Regulation of transport, regulation of agriculture - agriculture is a, zoning is z. You know, you go from a to z, they are all bad. There were so many studies, and the result was quite universal: The effects were bad.

We don't really have any kind of regulatory structure at all.

It's all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you want to go fishing, you get a license; if you want to shoot ducks, you can shoot only three ducks. The alternative is dead bodies at the intersections, no fish and no ducks. OK?

The State has but one face for me: that of the police. To my eyes, all of the State's ministries have this single face, and I cannot imagine the ministry of culture other than as the police of culture, with its prefect and commissioners.

The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.

Once you have hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with some kind of chain of command or system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it. Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intended for you.

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.

I am for maximum supervision and minimum regulation.