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 Copy Share Image
In the foundation and development of a successful enterprise there must be a single-minded pursuit of financial profit. — C. Northcote Parkinson Copy Share Image
The mind reels at the multiplication of books intended to justify the author's promotion from assistant to associate professor. — C. Northcote Parkinson Copy Share Image
Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available. — C. Northcote Parkinson Copy Share Image
Time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved. — C. Northcote Parkinson Copy Share Image
It is now well known, however, that men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married. — C. Northcote Parkinson Copy Share Image
Administrators make work for each other so that they can multiply the number of their subordinates and enhance their prestige. — C. Northcote Parkinson Copy Share Image
People of great ability do not emerge, as a rule, from the happiest background. So far as my own observation goes, I would conclude… — C. Northcote Parkinson Copy Share Image
No king or minister could have instructed Newton to discover the law of gravity, for they did not know and could not know that… — C. Northcote Parkinson Copy Share Image
A committee grows organically, flourishes and blossoms, sunlit on top and shady beneath, until it dies, scattering the seeds from which other committees will… — C. Northcote Parkinson Copy Share Image
Deliberative bodies become decreasingly effective after they pass five to eight members. — C. Northcote Parkinson Copy Share Image
