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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (7,902)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,026)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,949)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,116)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,889)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,283)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,930)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,751)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,593)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,469)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- 18-Jan-21 - "The Christian Way of Life in Human Relations," speech, General Assembly fo the National Council of Churches, St Louis (4 Dec 1957) | WIST on Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963).
- 8-Jan-21 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Speech to the electors of Bristol (3 Nov 1774).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Republic, Book 1, 347c.
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on “On The Conduct of Life” (1822).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907).
Quotations by Peter, Lawrence J.
An actuary is someone who brings a fake bomb on a plane because that decreases the chances that there will be another bomb on the plane.
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents’ shortcomings.
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.
Going to church does not make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car.
Would the boy you were be proud of the man you are?
You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can make a damn fool of yourself any old time.
Lawrence J. Peter (1919-1990) American educator, management theorist
Peter’s Almanac, “3 December” (1982)
See Lincoln.
Tact is the art of putting your foot down without stepping on anyone’s toes.
There are two kinds of losers: (1) the good loser and (2) those who can’t act.
The red light is always longer than the green light.
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
History teaches us the mistakes we are going to make.
There are two kinds of egotists: Those who admit it and the rest of us.
The most useful of all social graces is the ability to yawn with your mouth closed.
Lawrence J. Peter (1919-1990) American educator, management theorist
Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977)
(Source)
Variant: As quoted in The Wall Street Journal (9 Aug 1984): 'At board meetings, "the one unmatched asset is the ability to yawn with your mouth closed," says Robert Mueller in a new book, 'Behind the Boardroom Door.'"
Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticizing the younger one.
A pessimist is a man who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
[The reformer] wants his conscience to be your guide.
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear, but forgetting where you heard it.
If you don’t know where you’re going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.
Lawrence J. Peter (1919-1990) American educator, management theorist
The Peter Principle (1969)
See Richard Cumberland.