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Home
Authors
C. Northcote Parkinson
British
Historian
About the author
The smaller the function, the greater the management.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#Management
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,
British
Historian
#Life
#Man
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,
British
Historian
#Man
#Opportunity
#Decisions
#Importance
Time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#Time
#Will
Men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#Being
#Result
#Men
#Politics
When any organizational entity expands beyond 21 members, the real power will be in some smaller body.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#Will
#Power
#Body
It is better to be a has-been than a never-was.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
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,
British
Historian
#Time
#Will
#Law
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#Time
#Work
#Completion
Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#Perfection
Make the people sovereign and the poor will use the machinery of government to dispossess the rich.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#People
#Will
#Government
#Poor
Expenditures rise to meet income.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#Income
Expansion means complexity and complexity decay.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#Complexity
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#Delay
#Denial
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,
British
Historian
#Will
#Committee
#Flowers
In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#Want
#People
#Politics
The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.
C. Northcote Parkinson,
British
Historian
#Society
#Sense
#Boredom