Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Laurence J. Peter Author

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: Sep 16, 1919
  • Died: Jan 12, 1990

Dr. Laurence Johnston Peter (September 16, 1919 - January 12, 1990) 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 Peter Principle, in which he states: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ... in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties ... Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." The Peter Principle became one of the most profound principles of management from the University of Southern California. It is a heavily quoted principle at the Marshall School of Business.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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