"Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively"
About this Quote
“Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively” is Laurence J. Peter at his most surgical: a one-line demotion of credentialed authority. The joke lands because it treats expertise not as accumulated knowledge but as a tiny streak of luck, the way a hot hand in sports gets mistaken for destiny. “Three” is the perfect number here: enough to feel meaningful, too few to be statistically respectable. Peter is mocking our hunger to crown certainty in a world that mostly runs on probability.
The subtext is less anti-intellectual than anti-performance. Peter isn’t saying experts know nothing; he’s saying the culture often rewards the appearance of knowing. We retroactively build a halo around someone who happened to be right a few times, then outsource our judgment to them. The word “guesses” is the knife twist: it exposes how much of forecasting, management, even policy is inference under pressure, dressed up as inevitability. His use of “a man” isn’t incidental, either. It reflects the mid-century default image of authority: masculine, credentialed, confident. That gendered phrasing underlines how expertise is socially granted as much as earned.
Context matters: Peter is the Peter Principle guy, a writer obsessed with how institutions promote and validate people in ways that don’t track competence. This line is a companion piece: it skewers the worship of experts in bureaucracies and media alike, where track records are cherry-picked, uncertainty is punished, and being wrong is survivable if you sound sure. It’s cynicism with a point: humility should be part of the job description.
The subtext is less anti-intellectual than anti-performance. Peter isn’t saying experts know nothing; he’s saying the culture often rewards the appearance of knowing. We retroactively build a halo around someone who happened to be right a few times, then outsource our judgment to them. The word “guesses” is the knife twist: it exposes how much of forecasting, management, even policy is inference under pressure, dressed up as inevitability. His use of “a man” isn’t incidental, either. It reflects the mid-century default image of authority: masculine, credentialed, confident. That gendered phrasing underlines how expertise is socially granted as much as earned.
Context matters: Peter is the Peter Principle guy, a writer obsessed with how institutions promote and validate people in ways that don’t track competence. This line is a companion piece: it skewers the worship of experts in bureaucracies and media alike, where track records are cherry-picked, uncertainty is punished, and being wrong is survivable if you sound sure. It’s cynicism with a point: humility should be part of the job description.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: The Executive's Book of Quotations (Julia Vitullo-Martin, J. Robert Moskin, 1994) modern compilationISBN: 9780195078367 · ID: QCUUKOvYh70C
Evidence: ... EXPERT Attributed to HENRY VIII , on deciding to take a fourth wife " Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert . " LAURENCE J. PETER ... makes no difference whether the United States exports ... Other candidates (1) Laurence J. Peter (Laurence J. Peter) compilation36.3% an atheist is a man who believes himself an accident peter was commenting on bur |
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