Whether those others were parents, priests, friends or bureaucrats, their motive was largely the same: they thought they knew what it took to pair people off better than those people knew themselves.
Last year bureaucrats in the Indian state of Assam, which has a population of about 33m people, produced a list of more than 4m of its residents whom they consider foreigners, without any right to live there.
There's a certain tragicness here as, in their reminiscing, they initially find great meaning in what the old bureaucrat was able to achieve, and seem inspired to follow his example, to become true servants of the people.
He complained that bureaucrats were overstating the potential fallout of ditching the Iran nuclear deal, but put off pulling out of it as he had promised to do during the campaign.
Bureaucrats in the Reserve Bank of India, the central bank, will be unsettled by the risks that lie outside the banking system, and not just within it.
We who love games and want to see them become something more, something better, not some bureaucrat in a back office waiting for the clock to strike 6. I'll leave you with this.