Top 140 Laurence J. Peter Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Laurence J. Peter

2. “Reality is for people who can’t face drugs.”

— Laurence J. Peter

3. “Peter’s Principle: In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence.”

— Laurence J. Peter

4. “Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.”

— Laurence J. Peter

5. “Would the boy you were be proud of the man you are?”

— Laurence J. Peter

6. “You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don’t let yourself indulge in vain wishes.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

9. “If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?”

— Laurence J. Peter

10. “A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out.”

— Laurence J. Peter

11. “A man doesn’t know what he knows until he knows what he doesn’t know.”

— Laurence J. Peter

12. “The man who believes he can do it is probably right, and so is the man who believes he can’t.”

— Laurence J. Peter

13. “The unexpected always happens.”

— Laurence J. Peter

14. “In spite of warnings, nothing much happens until the status quo becomes more painful than change.”

— Laurence J. Peter

15. “Everyone is in awe of the lion tamer in a cage with half a dozen lions-everyone but a school bus driver.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

17. “An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to.”

— Laurence J. Peter

18. “Don’t believe in miracles – depend on them.”

— Laurence J. Peter

19. “May your happiest days of the past be your saddest days of your future.”

— Laurence J. Peter

20. “When I want your opinion I’ll give it to you.”

— Laurence J. Peter

21. “The reason crime doesn’t pay is that when it does, it is called a more respectable name.”

— Laurence J. Peter

22. “Fools rush in where wise men fear to trade.”

— Laurence J. Peter

23. “Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

25. “Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

27. “The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.”

— Laurence J. Peter

28. “A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. A theologian is the man who finds it.”

— Laurence J. Peter

29. “The problem with temptation is that you may not get another chance.”

— Laurence J. Peter

30. “Don’t worry about middle age: you’ll outgrow it.”

— Laurence J. Peter

31. “The devil could change. He was once an angel and may be evolving still.”

— Laurence J. Peter

32. “Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.”

— Laurence J. Peter

33. “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed king can still goof up.”

— Laurence J. Peter

34. “Every man serves a useful purpose: a miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

36. “Bore : A fellow who can change the subject back to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours.”

— Laurence J. Peter

37. “The habitually punctual make all their mistakes right on time.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

40. “The surest sign that you haven’t any sense is to argue with one who hasn’t.”

— Laurence J. Peter

41. “Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

43. “Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.”

— Laurence J. Peter

44. “If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three.”

— Laurence J. Peter

45. “The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.”

— Laurence J. Peter

46. “There are two sorts of losers – the good loser, and the one who can’t act.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

48. “Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. In spite of the cost of living, it’s still popular.”

— Laurence J. Peter

49. “The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for.”

— Laurence J. Peter

50. “Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small.”

— Laurence J. Peter