Laurence J. Peter

Quotes

• “The computer may be incompetent in itself--that is, unable to do the work for which it was designed. This kind of incomp...”
• “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean ...”
• “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.”
• “An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.”
• “An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.”
• “Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.”
• “The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.”
• “Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.”
• “Before publishers' blurbs were invented, authors had to make their reputations by writing.”
• “It's better to have loved and lost than to have to do forty pounds of laundry a week.”
• “Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.”
• “Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.”
• “Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.”
• “The cave-dweller's wife complained that he hadn't dragged her anywhere in months.”
• “Speak when you are angry - and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.”
• “Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.”
• “Middle age is when anything new in the way you feel is most likely a symptom.”
• “Old age is when you know all the answers but nobody asks you the questions.”
• “Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.”
• “Egypt: Where the Israelites would still be if Moses had been a bureaucrat.”
• “Conscience: That which makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.”
• “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
• “Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.”
• “My problem is I say what I'm thinking before I think what I'm saying.”
• “A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know.”
• “The problem with temptation is that you may not get another chance.”
• “America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.”
• “Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.”
• “Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.”
• “Facts are stubborn things but statistics are more pliable.”
• “Early to bed early to rise work like hell and advertise.”
• “The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.”
• “Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.”
• “When I want your opinion I'll give it to you.”
• “If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.”
• “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”
• “He laughs best whose laugh lasts.”