Laurence J. Peter

Canada
16 Sep 1919 // 12 Jan 1990
Educator, Author

Quotes



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

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong
Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong
Speak when you are angry - and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.
Incompetence knows no barriers of time or place.
The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.
The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at becoming incompetent.

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong
If at first you don't succeed, you may be at your level of incompetence.

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays