Laurence J. Peter Quotes

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

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

You shouldn't punish others for your own choices.

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

Aristotle's axiom: The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

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.

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

The cave-dweller's wife complained that he hadn't dragged her anywhere in months.

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.

Lead, follow or get of the way

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

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

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

Many live by their wits but few by their wit.

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

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

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

A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out.

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

Don't believe in miracles - depend on them.

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

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

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

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

An employee's relationship - by blood, marriage or acquaintance - with a person above him in the hierarchy.

Reality is for people who can't face drugs.

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

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.

The efficiency of a hierarchy is inversely proportional to its Maturity Quotient, M.Q. MQ = No. of employees at level of incompetence x 100 Total no. of employees in hierarchy Obviously, when MQ reaches 100, no useful work will be accomplished at all.

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

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

The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

A staff increase may produce a temporary improvement, but the promotion process eventually produces its effect on the newcomers and they, too, rise to their levels of incompetence.

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

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

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

They lead only as the carved wooden figurehead leads the ship.

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

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

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

The unexpected always happens.

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

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

Two things reduce prejudice: education and laughter.

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

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

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.

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

Incompetence," he argued, "knows no barrier of time or place.

Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.

He laughs best whose laugh lasts.

Any government, whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, a communistic or free enterprise bureaucracy, will fall when its hierarchy reaches an intolerable state of maturity.

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

As individuals we tend to climb to our levels of incompetence. We behave as though up is better and more is better, and yet all around us we see the tragic victims of this mindless escalation.

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

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

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

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

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

A man convinced against his will is not convinced.

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

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

Nobody understands how the incessant pressure from above and the incurable incompetence below make it utterly impossible for me to do an adequate job and keep a clean desk.

Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.

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

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

Three Observations 1) The computer may be incompetent in itself - that is, unable to do regularly and accurately the work for which it was designed. This kind of incompetence can never be eliminated, because the Peter Principle applies in the plants where computers are designed and manufactured. 2) Even when competent in itself, the computer vastly magnifies the results of incompetence in its owners or operators. 3) The computer, like a human employee, is subject to the Peter Principle. If it does good work at first, there is a strong tendency to promote it to more responsible tasks, until it reaches its level of incompetence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Employees in a hierarchy do not really object to incompetence (Peter's Paradox): they merely gossip about incompetence to mask their envy of employees who have Pull.

Ignorance is the mother of research.

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

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed king can still goof up.

Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert.

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

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

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

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

Fools rush in where wise men fear to trade.

A bureaucrat's idea of cleaning up his files is to make a copy of every paper before he destroys it.

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.