Great Throughts Treasury

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people."

"Middle age is when it takes longer to rest than to get tired."

"Competence always contains the seeds of incompetence."

"Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticizing the younger one."

"When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you."

"[Peter’s Survival Principle] Lead, follow, or get out of the way."

"[The Peter Principle] In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

"Would the boy you were be proud of the man you are?"

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

"There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought."

"Against logic there is no armor like ignorance."

"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."

"If we lacked imagination enough to foresee something better, life would indeed be a tragedy."

"Nobody can be perfect unless he admits his faults, but if he has faults how can he be perfect."

"A man convinced against his will is not convinced."

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

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

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

"Everyone rises to their level of incompetence. "

"Lead, follow, or get out of the way. "

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

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