Philip K. Howard > Quotes

“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, The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

“Uniformity in the common law, consisting of broad principles like the "reasonable person" standard, generally permits adjustment for the circumstances. This type of uniform principle is almost synonymous with fairness. Uniform application of a detailed rule, on the other hand, will almost always favor one group over another. p. 34”
― Philip K. Howard, The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

“By exiling human judgment in the last few decades, modern law changed role from useful tool to brainless tyrant. This legal regime will never be up to the job, any more than the Soviet system of central planning was, because ti can't think. The comedy of law's sterile logic--large POISON signs warning against common sand, spending twenty-two years on pesticide review and deciding next to nothing, allowing fifty-year-old white men to sue for discrimination--is all too reminiscent of the old jokes we used to hear about life in the Eastern bloc.
Judgement is to law as water is to crops. It should not be surprising that law has become brittle, and society along with it.”
― Philip K. Howard, The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

“Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite.”
― Philip K. Howard, The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

“We must abandon our belief that human choice denigrates the Rule of Law.”
― Philip K. Howard, The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Senseless Bureaucracy

“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas,” John Maynard Keynes famously observed, “but in escaping from the old ones.”
― Philip K. Howard, The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Senseless Bureaucracy

“Overthrow the bureaucracy, and return to a system based on human responsibility.”
― Philip K. Howard, The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Senseless Bureaucracy

“America has succumbed to its own intermediate goal. Purging official discretion, not advancing the public good, has become the goal of the Rule of Law. Better to prevent a bad choice, even at the cost of banning all good choices. Unquestioned assumptions are the most powerful forces in human affairs. If people assume something is right or wrong, they’ll act on it even to the point of self-destruction. Just as the inhabitants of Easter Island built giant statues until there were no more resources to support life on the island, Americans seem content to pile society high with detailed regulations as long as they succeed in preventing anyone with responsibility from actually making a decision.”
― Philip K. Howard, The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Senseless Bureaucracy

“Mindless rules, not accountable officials, are the enemy of freedom.”
― Philip K. Howard, The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Senseless Bureaucracy

“In 2010, 70 percent of federal tax revenue was consumed by three entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security)”
― Philip K. Howard, The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Senseless Bureaucracy

“Do not let us indulge an idea that we can make a perfect system and eliminate all evils or possibilities of evil. We can lay out some general lines … [and] say generally … “we hold you … responsible for the thorough administration of all affairs … under these general rules.”
― Philip K. Howard, The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

“Automatic law corrodes our freedom”
― Philip K. Howard, The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Senseless Bureaucracy