Skip to content

Quotes from The Dilbert Principle — Scott Adams

1957–2026 United States

← All quotes by Scott Adams

12 quotes

I have a saying: "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

The most important skill for any leader is the ability to take credit for things that happen on their own.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

It's useless to expect rational behavior from the people you work with, or anybody else for that matter.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

Always dress better than your peers so your clothes will be the ones selected for promotion.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

A Mission Statement is defined as "a long awkward sentence that demonstrates management's inability to think clearly." All good companies have one.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

Contrary to popular belief, it's often your clothing that gets promoted.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

If not for the compulsion of engineers, mankind would have never seen the wheel, settling instead for the trapezoid because some Neanderthal in Marketing convinced everybody it had great braking power.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

The office is designed for "work," not productivity. Work can be defined as "anything you'd rather not be doing." Productivity is a different matter. Telecommuting substitutes two hours of productivity for ten hours of work.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

The goal of change management is to dupe slow-witted employees into thinking change is good for them by appealing to their sense of adventure and love of challenge. This is like convincing a trout to leap out of a stream to experience the adventure of getting deboned.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

Ninety percent of all new business ventures fail. Apparently, ten percent of the time you get lucky, and that's enough to support a modern economy. I'm betting that's what separates us from the animals; animals are lucky only nine percent of the time.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

These days it seems like any idiot with a laptop computer can churn out a business book and make a few bucks. That's certainly what I'm hoping. It would be a real letdown if the trend changed before this masterpiece goes to print.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Scott Adams (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.