About Author : Laurence J. Peter was an educator and “hierarchiologist,” best known to the general public for the formulation of the Peter Principle.He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and began his career as a teacher in 1941. He received the degree of Doctor of Education from Washington State University in 1963.In 1964, Peter moved to California, where he became an Associate Professor of Education, Director of the Evelyn Frieden Centre for Prescriptive Teaching, and Coordinator of Programs for Emotionally Disturbed Children at the University of Southern California. He became widely famous in 1968, on the publication of the The Peter Principle, in which he states: “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
Laurence J. Peter Quotes and Sayings
Fortune knocks but once but misfortune has much more patience.
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
Slump and the world slumps with you. Push and you push alone.
It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out.
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
There are two kinds of failures those who thought and never did and those who did and never thought.
Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car.
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
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.
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.
Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.
Facts are stubborn things but statistics are more pliable.
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
Every man serves a useful purpose A miser for example makes a wonderful ancestor.
America is a country that doesn’t know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there.
In spite of the cost of living it’s still popular.
If you don’t know where you are going you will probably end up somewhere else.
Speak when you are angry–and you will make the best speech you’ll ever regret.
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents’ shortcomings.
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind what is the significance of a clean desk.
The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.
Real constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.
The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.
Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.
Competence like truth beauty and contact lenses is in the eye of the beholder.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe.