Every employee rises to the level of this own competence.
Man's First Mistake: The Wheel.
When in doubt or danger, run in circles, scream and shout.
In spite of the cost of living its still popular.
A man convinced against his will is not convinced.
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.
Given enough time—and assuming the existence of enough ranks in the hierarchy—each employee rises to, and remains at, his level of incompetence.
You don't need to take a persons advice to make him feel good, just ask him for it.
Many a man, under the old and the new systems, has made the upward step from candidate to legislator, only to achieve his level of incompetence.
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.
Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.
Nobody understands how the incessant pressure from above and the incurable incompetence below make it utterly impossible for me to do an adequate job and keep a clean desk.
He must examine his objectives and see that true progress is achieved through moving forward to a better way of life, rather than upward to total life incompetence.
The problem with temptation is that you may not get another chance.
Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.
America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there.
You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don't let yourself indulge in vain wishes.
Every man serves a useful purpose A miser for example makes a wonderful ancestor.
Men now monopolize the upper levels... depriving women of their rightful share of opportunities for incompetence.
Aristotle's axiom: The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for.
Before publishers' blurbs were invented, authors had to make their reputations by writing.
Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.
Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
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.
The efficiency of a hierarchy is inversely proportional to its Maturity Quotient, M.Q. MQ = No. of employees at level of incompetence × 100 Total no. of employees in hierarchy Obviously, when MQ reaches 100, no useful work will be accomplished at all.
Employees in a hierarchy do not really object to incompetence (Peter's Paradox): they merely gossip about incompetence to mask their envy of employees who have Pull.
A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out.
The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.
Speak when you are angry - and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.
It's better to have loved and lost than to have to do forty pounds of laundry a week.
My problem is I say what I'm thinking before I think what I'm saying.
Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert.
America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.
Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.
Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.
The computer may be incompetent in itself--that is, unable to do the work for which it was designed. This kind of incompetence can never be eliminated, because the Peter Principle applies in the plants where computers are designed and manufactured.
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street.
The more conceited members of the race think in terms of an endless ascent—or promotion ad infinitum. I would point out that, sooner or later, man must reach his level of life-incompetence.
If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
Any government, whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, a communistic or free enterprise bureaucracy, will fall when its hierarchy reaches an intolerable state of maturity.
Incompetence, he argued, knows no barrier of time or place.
