“The only valid rule about the proper length of a statement is that it achieve its purpose effectively.”
Source: Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977), p. 10: Introduction
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Laurence J. Peter 26
Canadian eductor 1919–1990Related quotes

“There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer.”
Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 37

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)
Context: The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology. Compassion was the litmus test for the prophets of Israel, for the rabbis of the Talmud, for Jesus, for Paul, and for Muhammad, not to mention Confucius, Lao-tsu, the Buddha, or the sages of the Upanishads.
Set theory and the continuum hypothesis, p. 8. https://books.google.com/books?id=Z4NCAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA8
Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis (1966)

Volume 2, Ch. 1
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

“It serves the purpose of not serving a purpose, surely quite a valid one.”
In an interview in Artforum, Nov. 83
Interviews

“The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it”

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Essays on Woman (1996), Spirituality of the Christian Woman (1932)