Top 100 Laurence J. Peter Quotes
#1. Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.
Laurence J. Peter
#3. If you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, you don't need advice.
Laurence J. Peter
#6. Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.
Laurence J. Peter
#7. As the farmer said, I'm not greedy, all I want is the land next to mine.
Laurence J. Peter
#10. Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticizing the younger one.
Laurence J. Peter
#11. When you see yourself quoted in print and you're sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation.
Laurence J. Peter
#12. 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
#13. Middle age is when anything new in the way you feel is most likely a symptom.
Laurence J. Peter
#15. It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.
Laurence J. Peter
#16. Home is where the college student home for the holidays isn't.
Laurence J. Peter
#17. Marriage is a good deal like taking a bath-not so hot once you get accustomed to it.
Laurence J. Peter
#18. The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.
Laurence J. Peter
#19. Going to church doesn't make you any more a Christian than going to the garage makes you a car.
Laurence J. Peter
#20. A staff increase may produce a temporary improvement, but the promotion process eventually produces its effect on the newcomers and they, too, rise to their levels of incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter
#21. The surest sign that you haven't any sense is to argue with one who hasn't.
Laurence J. Peter
#22. The seaman tells stories of winds, the ploughman of bulls; the soldier details his wounds, the shepherd his sheep.
Laurence J. Peter
#25. Many a man, under the old and the new systems, has made the upward step from candidate to legislator, only to achieve his level of incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter
#26. An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to.
Laurence J. Peter
#27. There are some men who in a fifty-fifty proposition insist on getting the hyphen too.
Laurence J. Peter
#28. Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty, but anything can get dirty without something else getting clean.
Laurence J. Peter
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.
Laurence J. Peter
#32. Every man serves a useful purpose: a miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor.
Laurence J. Peter
#33. When a New Yorker looks like he has a suntan, it's probably rust.
Laurence J. Peter
#35. If we lacked imagination enough to foresee something better, life would indeed be a tragedy.
Laurence J. Peter
#36. There are more pretty photographs of women than there are photographs of pretty women.
Laurence J. Peter
#37. A free press is one that prints a dictator's speech but doesn't have to.
Laurence J. Peter
#39. Only mediocrities rise to the top in a system that won't tolerate wave making.
Laurence J. Peter
#40. 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
#42. There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one.
Laurence J. Peter
#43. Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.
Laurence J. Peter
#45. 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
#46. Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
Laurence J. Peter
#47. Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.
Laurence J. Peter
#48. Computers can solve all kinds of problems except the unemployment problem they create.
Laurence J. Peter
#49. A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know.
Laurence J. Peter
#50. Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.
Laurence J. Peter
#51. The habitually punctual make all their mistakes right on time.
Laurence J. Peter
#52. 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
#53. All science is concerned with the relationship of cause and effect. Each scientific discovery increases man's ability to predict the consequences of his actions and thus his ability to control future events.
Laurence J. Peter
#54. 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
#56. A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street.
Laurence J. Peter
#58. We hate to have some people give us advice because we know how badly they need it themselves.
Laurence J. Peter
#60. Humility is the embarrassment you feel when you tell people how wonderful you are.
Laurence J. Peter
#61. 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
#62. Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.
Laurence J. Peter
#65. The advantage of modern means of communication is they enable you to worry about things in all of the world
Laurence J. Peter
#67. If at first you don't succeed, you may be at your level of incompetence already.
Laurence J. Peter
#68. If the outcome is good, what's the difference between motives that sound good and good, sound motives?
Laurence J. Peter
#69. Employees in a hierarchy do not really object to incompetence (Peter's Paradox): they merely gossip about incompetence to mask their envy of employees who have Pull.
Laurence J. Peter
#70. The problem with temptation is that you may not get another chance.
Laurence J. Peter
#71. There are two kinds of egotists: Those who admit it, and the rest of us.
Laurence J. Peter
#72. The cave-dweller's wife complained that he hadn't dragged her anywhere in months.
Laurence J. Peter
#76. An optimist is one who makes the best of it when he gets the worst of it.
Laurence J. Peter
#77. The more conceited members of the race think in terms of an endless ascent - or promotion ad infinitum. I would point out that, sooner or later, man must reach his level of life-incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter
#78. Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
Laurence J. Peter
#79. 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
#80. It's strange that men should take up crime when there are so many legal ways to be dishonest.
Laurence J. Peter
#81. We are members of a strange species that devotes its energies to climbing the ladder of success in order to make money to buy things we don't like.
Laurence J. Peter
#82. America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.
Laurence J. Peter
#84. Men now monopolize the upper levels ... depriving women of their rightful share of opportunities for incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter
#88. 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
#89. The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for.
Laurence J. Peter
#90. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed king can still goof up.
Laurence J. Peter
#91. There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought
Laurence J. Peter
#92. A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
Laurence J. Peter
#93. A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.
Laurence J. Peter
#94. In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.
Laurence J. Peter
#96. Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert.
Laurence J. Peter
#97. A bureaucrat's idea of cleaning up his files is to make a copy of every paper before he destroys it.
Laurence J. Peter
#98. An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
Laurence J. Peter
#100. Bore : A fellow who can change the subject back to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours.
Laurence J. Peter
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