Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert.
There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one.
Before publishers' blurbs were invented, authors had to make their reputations by writing.
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.
If we lacked imagination enough to foresee something better, life would indeed be a tragedy.
The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.
It's strange that men should take up crime when there are so many legal ways to be dishonest.
The man who believes he can do it is probably right, and so is the man who believes he can't.
We hate to have some people give us advice because we know how badly they need it themselves.
An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?
Nobody can be perfect unless he admits his faults, but if he has faults how can he be perfect?
Peter's Principle: In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence.
Going to church doesn't make you any more a Christian than going to the garage makes you a car.
. . . if you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, you don't need advice.
In spite of warnings, nothing much happens until the status quo becomes more painful than change.
Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticizing the younger one.
Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be appointed to do the work.
A bureaucrat's idea of cleaning up his files is to make a copy of every paper before he destroys it.
There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought
If the outcome is good, what's the difference between motives that sound good and good, sound motives?
A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
When you see yourself quoted in print and you’re sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation.
Everyone is in awe of the lion tamer in a cage with half a dozen lions-everyone but a school bus driver.
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
The advantage of modern means of communication is they enable you to worry about things in all of the world
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.
Men now monopolize the upper levels... depriving women of their rightful share of opportunities for incompetence.
The seaman tells stories of winds, the ploughman of bulls; the soldier details his wounds, the shepherd his sheep.
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.
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
The machinery of government is a vast series of interlocking hierarchies riddled through and through with incompetence.
Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty, but anything can get dirty without something else getting clean.
Bore : A fellow who can change the subject back to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours.
A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.
I inherited my ability from both parents; my mother's ability for spending money, and my father's ability for not earning it.
Prejudice is one of the world's greatest labor-saving devices; it enables you to form an opinion without having to dig up the facts.
Scientists are still trying to produce life in the laboratory, but it shouldn't be difficult if the laboratory assistant is pretty and willing.
We are members of a strange species that devotes its energies to climbing the ladder of success in order to make money to buy things we don't like.
You could generally inform a real close friend: when you have manufactured a idiot of on your own he does not truly feel you've finished a long lasting job.
No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a camel - anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform effectively under such difficult conditions.
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.
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.
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.
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.
Most hierarchies are nowadays so cumbered with rules and traditions, and so bound in by public laws, that even high employees do not have to lead anyone anywhere, in the sense of pointing out the direction and setting the pace. They simply follow precedents, obey regulations, and move at the head of the crowd. Such employees lead only in the sense that the curved wooden figurehead leads the ship .