Top 140 Laurence J. Peter Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.”

— Laurence J. Peter

102. “Ignorance is the mother of research.”

— Laurence J. Peter

103. “They lead only as the carved wooden figurehead leads the ship.”

— Laurence J. Peter

104. “Middle age is when it takes longer to rest than to get tired.”

— Laurence J. Peter

105. “We hate to have some people give us advice because we know how badly they need it themselves.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

107. “There are some men who in a fifty-fifty proposition insist on getting the hyphen too.”

— Laurence J. Peter

108. “A lawyer is a man who helps you get what is coming to him.”

— Laurence J. Peter

109. “Give a child enough rope and he will trip you up.”

— Laurence J. Peter

110. “As a matter of fact is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn’t.”

— Laurence J. Peter

111. “Incompetence,” he argued, “knows no barrier of time or place.”

— Laurence J. Peter

112. “The cave-dweller’s wife complained that he hadn’t dragged her anywhere in months.”

— Laurence J. Peter

113. “My problem is I say what I’m thinking before I think what I’m saying.”

— Laurence J. Peter

114. “Middle age is when anything new in the way you feel is most likely a symptom.”

— Laurence J. Peter

115. “If the outcome is good, what’s the difference between motives that sound good and good, sound motives?”

— Laurence J. Peter

116. “A free press is one that prints a dictator’s speech but doesn’t have to.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

118. “Lead, follow or get of the way.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

120. “Middle age is when the best exercise is one of discretion.”

— Laurence J. Peter

121. “There are more pretty photographs of women than there are photographs of pretty women.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

124. “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.”

— Laurence J. Peter

125. “Never stand when you can sit; never walk when you can ride; never Push when you can Pull.”

— Laurence J. Peter

126. “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.”

— Laurence J. Peter

127. “Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.”

— Laurence J. Peter

128. “All, from police forces to armed forces, are rigid hierarchies of salaried employees, and all are necessarily cumbered with incompetents who cannot do their existing work, cannot be promoted, yet cannot be removed.”

— Laurence J. Peter

129. “Egypt: Where the Israelites would still be if Moses had been a bureaucrat.”

— Laurence J. Peter

130. “Many a man, under the old and the new systems, has made the upward step from candidate to legislator, only to achieve his level of incompetence.”

— Laurence J. Peter

131. “Don’t knock the rich. When did a poor person give you a job?”

— Laurence J. Peter

132. “When a New Yorker looks like he has a suntan, it’s probably rust.”

— Laurence J. Peter

133. “Given enough time – and assuming the existence of enough ranks in the hierarchy – each employee rises to, and remains at, his level of incompetence.”

— Laurence J. Peter

134. “The more conceited members of the race think in terms of an endless ascent – or promotion ad infinitum. I would point out that, sooner or later, man must reach his level of life-incompetence.”

— Laurence J. Peter

135. “Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence.”

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Laurence J. Peter

137. “Nobody can be perfect unless he admits his faults, but if he has faults how can he be perfect?”

— Laurence J. Peter

138. “The computer may be incompetent in itself – that is, unable to do the work for which it was designed. This kind of incompetence can never be eliminated, because the Peter Principle applies in the plants where computers are designed and manufactured.”

— Laurence J. Peter

139. “Nobody understands how the incessant pressure from above and the incurable incompetence below make it utterly impossible for me to do an adequate job and keep a clean desk.”

— Laurence J. Peter

140. “In any economic or political crisis, one thing is certain. Many learned experts will prescribe many different remedies.”

— Laurence J. Peter

141. “Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.”

— Laurence J. Peter