Laurence j. peter quotes

Peter's Principle: In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence.

The man who believes he can do it is probably right, and so is the man who believes he can't.

When I want your opinion I'll give it to you.

Every man serves a useful purpose: a miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor.

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.

It's strange that men should take up crime when there are so many legal ways to be dishonest.

An optimist is one who makes the best of it when he gets the worst of it.

Scientists are still trying to produce life in the laboratory, but it shouldn't be difficult if the laboratory assistant is pretty and willing.

Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty, but anything can get dirty without something else getting clean.

He laughs best whose laugh lasts.

do it now. There may be a law against it tomorrow.

Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

Computers can solve all kinds of problems except the unemployment problem they create.

A man convinced against his will is not convinced.

Before publishers' blurbs were invented, authors had to make their reputations by writing.

An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to.

Few of us ever test our powers of deduction, except when filling out an income tax form

The surest sign that you haven't any sense is to argue with one who hasn't.

In spite of warnings, nothing much happens until the status quo becomes more painful than change.

You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.

All science is concerned with the relationship of cause and effect. Each scientific discovery increases man's ability to predict the consequences of his actions and thus his ability to control future events.

Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticizing the younger one.

Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.

You don't need to take a persons advice to make him feel good, just ask him for it.

There are some men who in a fifty-fifty proposition insist on getting the hyphen too.

You shouldn't punish others for your own choices.

America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.

The machinery of government is a vast series of interlocking hierarchies riddled through and through with incompetence.

May your happiest days of the past be your saddest days of your future.

. . . if you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, you don't need advice.

Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small.

If at first you don't succeed, you may be at your level of incompetence already.

Noblest of all dogs is the hot-dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.

The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.

Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be appointed to do the work.

Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.

You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don't let yourself indulge in vain wishes.

Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.

Reality is for people who can't face drugs.

Many live by their wits but few by their wit.

We hate to have some people give us advice because we know how badly they need it themselves.

Ignorance is the mother of research.

Two things reduce prejudice: education and laughter.

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.

It usually takes two people to make one of them angry.

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ... in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties ... Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

It's better to have loved and lost than to have to do forty pounds of laundry a week.

Many an optimist has become rich simply by buying out a pessimist.

The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.

Would the boy you were be proud of the man you are?

There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one.

Middle age is when it takes longer to rest than to get tired.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.

Humility is the embarrassment you feel when you tell people how wonderful you are.

As the farmer said, "I'm not greedy, all I want is the land next to mine.

As a matter of fact is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn't.

Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.

Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.

America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there.

Don't believe in miracles - depend on them.

A true friend will see you through when others see that you are through.

If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?

A bore is a person who lights up the room simply by leaving it.

Most hierarchies are nowadays so cumbered with rules and traditions, and so bound in by public laws, that even high employees do not have to lead anyone anywhere, in the sense of pointing out the direction and setting the pace. They simply follow precedents, obey regulations, and move at the head of the crowd. Such employees lead only in the sense that the curved wooden figurehead leads the ship .

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

If we lacked imagination enough to foresee something better, life would indeed be a tragedy.

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.

The modern child will answer you back before you've said anything.

Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.

Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.

A free press is one that prints a dictator's speech but doesn't have to.

Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence.

A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street.

The reason crime doesn't pay is that when it does, it is called a more respectable name.

The problem with temptation is that you may not get another chance.

When a person puts his best foot forward and gets it stepped on, that's life.

If at first you don't succeed, lie, lie again.

Don't knock the rich. When did a poor person give you a job?

There are two sorts of losers - the good loser, and the one who can't act.

Prejudice is one of the world's greatest labor-saving devices; it enables you to form an opinion without having to dig up the facts.

The unexpected always happens.

A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.

Nobody can be perfect unless he admits his faults, but if he has faults how can he be perfect?

The advantage of modern means of communication is they enable you to worry about things in all of the world

Everyone is in awe of the lion tamer in a cage with half a dozen lions-everyone but a school bus driver.

We are members of a strange species that devotes its energies to climbing the ladder of success in order to make money to buy things we don't like.

It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.

Middle age is when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work.

The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for.

An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.

Middle age is when anything new in the way you feel is most likely a symptom.

There are more pretty photographs of women than there are photographs of pretty women.

Men now monopolize the upper levels... depriving women of their rightful share of opportunities for incompetence.

My problem is I say what I'm thinking before I think what I'm saying.

Slump, and the world slumps with you. Push, and you push alone.

If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

Bore : A fellow who can change the subject back to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours.

Fools rush in where wise men fear to trade.

The seaman tells stories of winds, the ploughman of bulls; the soldier details his wounds, the shepherd his sheep.

When a New Yorker looks like he has a suntan, it's probably rust.

A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know.

Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.

Don't worry about middle age: you'll outgrow it.

Lead, follow or get of the way

There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought

You could generally inform a real close friend: when you have manufactured a idiot of on your own he does not truly feel you've finished a long lasting job.

Give a child enough rope and he will trip you up.

A lawyer is a man who helps you get what is coming to him.

In most hierarchies, supercompetence is more objectionable than incompetence.

In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.

If the outcome is good, what's the difference between motives that sound good and good, sound motives?

The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.

I inherited my ability from both parents; my mother's ability for spending money, and my father's ability for not earning it.

A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out.

Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.

There are two kinds of egotists: Those who admit it, and the rest of us

Egypt: Where the Israelites would still be if Moses had been a bureaucrat.

The devil could change. He was once an angel and may be evolving still.

Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.

Only mediocrities rise to the top in a system that won't tolerate wave making.

Ignorance once dispelled is difficult to reestablish.