C. Northcote Parkinson famous quotes

03-22-2025

Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Procrastination #Denial #Delay
Expenditure rises to meet income.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Inspirational #Income
When any organizational entity expands beyond 21 members, the real power will be in some smaller body.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Real #Body #Members
The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Opportunity #Men #Decision
The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Blessing #Boredom #Society
Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Perfection #Institutions #Collapse
The smaller the function, the greater the management.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Management #Function
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.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Mean #Law #Agendas
The mind reels at the multiplication of books intended to justify the author's promotion from assistant to associate professor.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Education #Book #Mind
Make the people sovereign and the poor will use the machinery of government to dispossess the rich.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Government #People #Use
Where life is colorful and varied, religion can be austere or unimportant. Where life is appallingly monotonous, religion must be emotional, dramatic and intense. Without the curry, boiled rice can be very dull.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Life #Emotional #Dull
The man whose life is devoted to paperwork has lost the initiative. He is dealing with things that are brought to his notice, having ceased to notice anything for himself.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Men #Life Is #Initiative
It is the busiest man who has time to spare.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Men
People of great ability do not emerge, as a rule, from the happiest background. So far as my own observation goes, I would conclude that ability, although hereditary, is improved by an early measure of adversity and improved again by a later measure of success.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Adversity #People #Observation
In the foundation and development of a successful enterprise there must be a single-minded pursuit of financial profit.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Business #Successful #Foundation
Expansion means complexity and complexity decay.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Mean #Focus #Expansion
The onset of one religion can be resisted only by another.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Political
Expenditures rise to meet income.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Survival #Income
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. General recognition of this fact is shown in the proverbial phrase "It is the busiest man who has time to spare."
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Men #Phrases #Facts
Parkinson's Law is a purely scientific discovery, inapplicable except in theory to the politics of the day. It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Weed #Discovery #Law
The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel and misrepresentation.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Communication #Void #Poison
No king or minister could have instructed Newton to discover the law of gravity, for they did not know and could not know that there was such a law to discover. No Treasury official told Fleming to discover penicillin. Nor was Rutherford instructed to split the atom by a certain date...
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Kings #Ignorance #Law
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.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Discovery #Perfect #Progress
It is now well known, however, that men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Men #Funny Marriage #Married
Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

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

#Work #Law #Numbers
Imagination is essential and it comes first, for without imagination we are aimless.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Imagination #Essentials #Firsts
A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.
-- C. Northcote Parkinson

#Flower #Roots #Plant

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