Peter's Principle: In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence.

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

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

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

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

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 .

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