Laurence J. Peter Quotes
Educator
Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.
Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.
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.
Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know.
Speak when you are angry - and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.
If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
If you don't know where you're going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
The seaman tells stories of winds, the ploughman of bulls; the soldier details his wounds, the shepherd his sheep.
The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.
Don't believe in miracles - depend on them.
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?
Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.
America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there.
Going to church doesn't make you any more a Christian than going to the garage makes you a car.
The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.
Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.
When in doubt or danger, run in circles, scream and shout.
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.
Slump, and the world slumps with you. Push, and you push alone.
An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.
Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert.
America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.
It's better to have loved and lost than to have to do forty pounds of laundry a week.
A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street.
There are two kinds of egotists: Those who admit it, and the rest of us.
Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.
A man convinced against his will is not convinced.
Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.
Nobody can be perfect unless he admits his faults, but if he has faults how can he be perfect?
A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be appointed to do the work.
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
As a matter of fact is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn't.
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.
Men now monopolize the upper levels... depriving women of their rightful share of opportunities for incompetence.