If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
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 basic quality for the diplomat is not intelligence but loyalty.
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 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.
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.”
The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.
Deliberative bodies become decreasingly effective after they pass five to eight members.
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.
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.
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.
Expansion means complexity and complexity decay.
The onset of one religion can be resisted only by another.
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.
Imagination is essential and it comes first, for without imagination we are aimless.
A committee grows organically, flourishes and blossoms, sunlit on top and shady beneath, until it dies, scattering the seeds from which other committees will spring.
The mind reels at the multiplication of books intended to justify the author’s promotion from assistant to associate professor.
In the foundation and development of a successful enterprise there must be a single-minded pursuit of financial profit.
The nice thing about standards is, there are so many to choose from. Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
Work gets done in the time available.
A luxury, once enjoyed, becomes a necessity.