Laurence J. Peter

It's better to have loved and lost than to have to do forty pounds of laundry a week.

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

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

Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.

Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.

An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.

America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.

America is a country that doesn't know where it is going, but is determined to set a speed record getting there.

Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.

Don't believe in miracles - depend on them.

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.

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

Lead follow or get out of the way.

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.

Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.

A man convinced against his will is not convinced.

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.

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

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

Nobody can be perfect unless he admits his faults but if he has faults how can he be perfect?

Men now monopolize the upper levels... depriving women of their rightful share of opportunities for incompetence.

Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.

If you don't know where you're going you will probably end up somewhere else.

When in doubt or danger, run in circles, scream and shout.

Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.

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

A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street.

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

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

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

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

Slump and the world slumps with you. Push and you push alone.

Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be appointed to do the work.

Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.

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

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

If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind what is the significance of a clean desk?

If two wrongs don't make a right try three.

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

Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.

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

The seaman tells stories of winds the ploughman of bulls, the soldier details his wounds the shepherd his sheep.

There are two kinds of egotists: Those who admit it and the rest of us.

A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.

Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert.

A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know.

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