Laurence J. Peter citations

“Never stand when you can sit; never walk when you can ride; never Push when you can Pull.”

“Speak when you are angry, and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.”

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

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

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

“Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“Occupational incompetence is everywhere. Have you noticed it? Probably we all have noticed it.”

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

“The only valid rule about the proper length of a statement is that it achieve its purpose effectively.”

“When you see yourself quoted in print and you're sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation.”

“If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”

“Some Blockett-type employees actually believe that they have received a genuine promotion; others recognize the truth. But the main function of a pseudo-promotion is to deceive people outside the hierarchy. When this is achieved, the maneuver is counted a success.”

“In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties. Do not be fooled by apparent exceptions.”

“Television has changed the American child from an irresistible force into an immovable object.”

“In every organization there is a considerable accumulation of dead wood in the executive level.”

“The habitually punctual make all their mistakes right on time.”

“Dr. Peter effectively destroys examples of seeming exceptions and is rather convincing that his principle is ubiquitous.”

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