Laurence J. Peter

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

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.

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

Many live by their wits but few by their wit.

All science is concerned with the relationship of cause and effect. Each scientific discovery increases man's ability to predict the consequences of his actions and thus his ability to control future events.

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

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

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

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

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

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."