Laurence J. Peter

“Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance to be incompetent.”

“A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”

“Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well-informed just to be undecided about them.”

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

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

“Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.”

“If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

“When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.”

“The cream rises to the top. So does the scum.”

“Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.”

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

“Most hierarchies were established by men who now occupy the upper levels, thus depriving women of an equal opportunity to achieve their levels of incompetence.”

“An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.”

“Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.”

“The noblest of all dogs is the hot-dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.”

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