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...

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

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.

Expansion means complexity and complexity decay.

Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

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

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

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

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

The smaller the function, the greater the management.

Expenditures rise to meet income.

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

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.

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

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

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.