Laurence J. Peter Quotes & Sayings

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

Marriage is a good deal like taking a bath-not so hot once you get accustomed to it. — Laurence J. Peter

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

My problem is I say what I'm thinking before I think what I'm saying. — Laurence J. Peter

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

Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively. — Laurence J. Peter

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

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

As the farmer said, I'm not greedy, all I want is the land next to mine. — Laurence J. Peter

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status — Laurence J. Peter

The problem with temptation is that you may not get another chance. — Laurence J. Peter

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

There are two kinds of egotists: Those who admit it, and the rest of us. — Laurence J. Peter

Man's First Mistake: The Wheel — Laurence J. Peter

America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation. — Laurence J. Peter

When in doubt or danger, run in circles, scream and shout. — Laurence J. Peter

Middle age is when the best exercise is one of discretion. — Laurence J. Peter

May your happiest days of the past be your saddest days of your future. — Laurence J. Peter

Given enough time - and assuming the existence of enough ranks in the hierarchy - each employee rises to, and remains at, his level of incompetence. — Laurence J. Peter

Many an optimist has become rich simply by buying out a pessimist. — Laurence J. Peter

The devil could change. He was once an angel and may be evolving still. — Laurence J. Peter

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

You shouldn't punish others for your own choices. — Laurence J. Peter

Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience. — Laurence J. Peter

The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for. — Laurence J. Peter

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

Going to church doesn't make you any more a Christian than going to the garage makes you a car. — Laurence J. Peter

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. — Laurence J. Peter

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

No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a camel - anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform effectively under such difficult conditions. — Laurence J. Peter

A bore is a person who lights up the room simply by leaving it. — Laurence J. Peter

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

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. — Laurence J. Peter

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. — Laurence J. Peter

A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out. — Laurence J. Peter

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

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

Do it now. There may be a law against it tomorrow. — Laurence J. Peter

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

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

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. — Laurence J. Peter

A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street. — Laurence J. Peter

When I want your opinion I'll give it to you. — Laurence J. Peter

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

All, from police forces to armed forces, are rigid hierarchies of salaried employees, and all are necessarily cumbered with incompetents who cannot do their existing work, cannot be promoted, yet cannot be removed. — Laurence J. Peter

It usually takes two people to make one of them angry. — Laurence J. Peter

An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to. — Laurence J. Peter

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

Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. — Laurence J. Peter

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

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

Nobody can be perfect unless he admits his faults, but if he has faults how can he be perfect? — Laurence J. Peter

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

Everyone rises to their level of incompetence. — Laurence J. Peter

The habitually punctual make all their mistakes right on time. — Laurence J. Peter

As a matter of fact is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn't. — Laurence J. Peter

Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object. — Laurence J. Peter

Reality is for people who can't face drugs. — Laurence J. Peter

Two can live as cheaply as one - if they both have good jobs. — Laurence J. Peter

The advantage of modern means of communication is they enable you to worry about things in all of the world — Laurence J. Peter

Computers can solve all kinds of problems except the unemployment problem they create. — Laurence J. Peter

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

The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure. — Laurence J. Peter

Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be appointed to do the work. — Laurence J. Peter

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. — Laurence J. Peter

Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small. — Laurence J. Peter

There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought — Laurence J. Peter

A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know. — Laurence J. Peter

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

Egypt: Where the Israelites would still be if Moses had been a bureaucrat. — Laurence J. Peter

Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticizing the younger one. — Laurence J. Peter

Slump, and the world slumps with you. Push and you push alone. — Laurence J. Peter

Good followers do not become good leaders. — Laurence J. Peter

A lawyer is a man who helps you get what is coming to him. — Laurence J. Peter

He must examine his objectives and see that true progress is achieved through moving forward to a better way of life, rather than upward to total life incompetence. — Laurence J. Peter

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. — Laurence J. Peter

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

Don't worry about middle age: you'll outgrow it. — Laurence J. Peter

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

Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other. — Laurence J. Peter

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. — Laurence J. Peter

Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent. — Laurence J. Peter

They lead only as the carved wooden figurehead leads the ship. — Laurence J. Peter

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. — Laurence J. Peter

In most hierarchies, super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence." He warned that extremely skilled and productive employees often face criticism, and are fired if they don't start performing worse. Their presence "disrupts and therefore violates the first commandment of hierarchical life: the hierarchy must be preserved. — Laurence J. Peter

He laughs best whose laugh lasts. — Laurence J. Peter

Give a child enough rope and he will trip you up. — Laurence J. Peter

Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder. — Laurence J. Peter

Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert. — Laurence J. Peter

If at first you don't succeed, lie, lie again. — Laurence J. Peter

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. — Laurence J. Peter

Don't believe in miracles - depend on them. — Laurence J. Peter

The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it. — Laurence J. Peter

Every man serves a useful purpose: a miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor. — Laurence J. Peter

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

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it. — Laurence J. Peter

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

The computer may be incompetent in itself
that is, unable to do 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. — Laurence J. Peter

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

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