Laurence J. Peter Quotes

There are more pretty photographs of women than there are photographs of pretty women.

As the farmer said, "I'm not greedy, all I want is the land next to mine.

Ignorance once dispelled is difficult to reestablish.

Many live by their wits but few by their wit.

When a person puts his best foot forward and gets it stepped on, that's life.

As a matter of fact is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn't.

It usually takes two people to make one of them angry.

Peter's Principle: In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence.

Poetry is that which is lost in translation.

No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a camel - anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform effectively under such difficult conditions.

When you see yourself quoted in print and you’re sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation.

Don't worry about middle age: you'll outgrow it.

Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty, but anything can get dirty without something else getting clean.

Many an optimist has become rich simply by buying out a pessimist.

The machinery of government is a vast series of interlocking hierarchies riddled through and through with incompetence.

The modern child will answer you back before you've said anything.

An optimist is one who makes the best of it when he gets the worst of it.

If we lacked imagination enough to foresee something better, life would indeed be a tragedy.

You could generally inform a real close friend: when you have manufactured a idiot of on your own he does not truly feel you've finished a long lasting job.

There are two sorts of losers - the good loser, and the one who can't act.

Scientists are still trying to produce life in the laboratory, but it shouldn't be difficult if the laboratory assistant is pretty and willing.

When a New Yorker looks like he has a suntan, it's probably rust.

If you can't keep up, drag them down to your level.

Middle age is when the best exercise is one of discretion.

A bureaucrat's idea of cleaning up his files is to make a copy of every paper before he destroys it.

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.

The surest sign that you haven't any sense is to argue with one who hasn't.

Lead, follow or get of the way

A man convinced against his will is not convinced.

Home is where the college student home for the holidays isn't.

They lead only as the carved wooden figurehead leads the ship.

Marriage is a good deal like taking a bath-not so hot once you get accustomed to it.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

Speak when you are angry, and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.

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

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

Facts are stubborn things but statistics are more pliable.

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.

Early to bed early to rise work like hell and advertise.

Conscience: That which makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.

Old age is when you know all the answers but nobody asks you the questions.

The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.

Speak when you are angry - and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Going to church doesn't make you any more a Christian than going to the garage makes you a car.