Laurence J. Peter Quotes

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

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

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

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

May your happiest days of the past be your saddest days of your future.

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

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

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

Home is where the college student home for the holidays isn't.

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

Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.

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

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

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

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

He laughs best whose laugh lasts.

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

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

Lead, follow or get of the way

The habitually punctual make all their mistakes right on time.

Ignorance is the mother of research.

Middle age is when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work.

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

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

The man who believes he can do it is probably right, and so is the man who believes he can't.

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

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

In most hierarchies, supercompetence is more objectionable than incompetence.

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

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

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

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.

The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for.

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

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

As a matter of fact is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn't.

Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty, but anything can get dirty without something else getting clean.

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

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

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

Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be appointed to do the work.

It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.

Most hierarchies are nowadays so cumbered with rules and traditions, and so bound in by public laws, that even high employees do not have to lead anyone anywhere, in the sense of pointing out the direction and setting the pace. They simply follow precedents, obey regulations, and move at the head of the crowd. Such employees lead only in the sense that the curved wooden figurehead leads the ship .

Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.

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 incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.

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

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