Dr. Laurence J. Peter
Laurence Peter is best known for publishing The Peter Principle, but a bit less known are his dry humored observations about organizations, people, and bureaucracies. Here are some snippets:
• 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.
• Education is a method whereby one acquires higher grade of prejudices.
• Humility is the embarrassment you feel when you tell people how wonderful you are.
• It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.
• Speak when you are angry – and you will make the best speech you’ll ever regret.
• The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.
• Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.
• A man convinced against his will is not convinced.
• As a matter of act is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn’t.
• Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be appointed to do the work.
• Don’t believe in miracles – depend of them.
• Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.
• Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.
• Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.
• Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
• The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.
• There are two kinds of egotists: Those who admit it, and the rest of us.
• Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
• 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.
• You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don’t let yourself indulge in vain wishes.