Life & Wisdom Quote by Laurence J. Peter

Peter’s joke lands because it treats censorship as a personality type, not just a policy. “An expert in cutting remarks” is a tidy double entendre: the censor literally cuts remarks from public view, but Peter also paints him as someone whose whole social skillset is cutting people down. That flip turns what censors often claim to be - guardians of public morals - into something pettier and more human: a professional scold with a red pen.

The second line sharpens the blade. “A man who knows more than he thinks you ought to” is not really about knowledge; it’s about ownership. Peter implies that the censor’s real job is to ration information, to act as the gatekeeper of what counts as “appropriate” for everyone else. The subtext is paternalism with an ego: I have access, and you don’t get it unless I approve. It’s a portrait of power that frames itself as protection.

Context matters here. Peter wrote in a 20th-century world where information was increasingly mass-produced and mass-managed: broadcast TV, Cold War secrecy, school boards, obscenity trials, bureaucratic “standards.” His line anticipates how censorship often hides inside procedures and good intentions. By defining the censor as someone who “knows more,” Peter also suggests the perverse irony: censorship doesn’t eliminate knowledge, it concentrates it. The censor becomes the most informed person in the room while insisting the room stay dim.