C. Northcote Parkinson Quotes

Perfection of planning is a symptom of decay. During a period of exciting discovery or progress, there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters.

The Law of Triviality ... briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

The matters most debated in a deliberative body tend to be the minor ones where everybody understands the issues.

Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

Make the people sovereign and the poor will use the machinery of government to dispossess the rich.

The vacuum created by a failure to communicate will quickly be filled with rumor, misrepresentations, drivel, and poison.

Administrators make work for each other so that they can multiply the number of their subordinates and enhance their prestige.

It is the busiest man who has time to spare.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.

Expenditure rises to meet income.

Men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.

Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.

The mind reels at the multiplication of books intended to justify the author's promotion from assistant to associate professor.

It is better to be a has-been than a never-was.

If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.

Deliberative bodies become decreasingly effective after they pass five to eight members.

Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.

The basic quality for the diplomat is not intelligence but loyalty.

When any organizational entity expands beyond 21 members, the real power will be in some smaller body.

Imagination is essential and it comes first, for without imagination we are aimless.

The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel and misrepresentation.

The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.

Expenditures rise to meet income.

The onset of one religion can be resisted only by another.

In the foundation and development of a successful enterprise there must be a single-minded pursuit of financial profit.

The smaller the function, the greater the management.

The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.

Expansion means complexity and complexity decay.