Quotes By C. Northcote Parkinson

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

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

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

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.

The smaller the function, the greater the management.

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.

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

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

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

Expansion means complexity and complexity decay.

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.

Expenditures rise to meet income.

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

Time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

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

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