Laurence J. Peter

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.
Laurence J. Peter - The Peter Principle (1969), chapter 1
Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.

Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty, but anything can get dirty without something else getting clean.
Laurence J. Peter - "The Peter Principle"
Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.

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

A bore is a fellow talking who can change the subject back to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours.

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.

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

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

Every man serves a useful purpose: A miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor.

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

An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.
Laurence J. Peter - paraphrasing Sir Walter Scott
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe.

- Laurence J. Peter