Laurence J. Peter Quotes

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

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

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

Don't believe in miracles - depend on them.

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

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

When in doubt or danger, run in circles, scream and shout.

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

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

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

Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.

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

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

The habitually punctual make all their mistakes right on time.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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