Life & Wisdom Quote by Laurence J. Peter

Peter’s line is the kind of joke that lands because it pretends to be advice while quietly torching the whole idea of moral arithmetic. We all know the proverb it riffs on, and that familiarity is the setup: “two wrongs don’t make a right” is supposed to end the argument. Peter’s twist (“try three”) turns the reprimand into a loophole, exposing how easily ethical language gets repurposed once someone wants permission badly enough.

The intent is satirical, but it isn’t just a one-liner about misbehavior. It’s a miniature portrait of institutional rationalization, the habitat Peter knew well as the father of the Peter Principle. In bureaucracies, politics, corporate scandals, even family feuds, wrongdoing rarely stops at the first bad decision; it compounds. People don’t merely double down, they build a narrative where escalation becomes “strategy,” and the original rule gets treated as a technicality. If two wrongs don’t work, the joke implies, the solution isn’t reflection-it’s iteration.

The subtext is cynicism about self-justification: humans are less interested in being good than in feeling consistent. “Three” is funny because it’s absurdly specific and faintly procedural, as if ethics were a recipe you could adjust. It captures a darkly familiar rhythm of modern life: when accountability shows up, we don’t always correct course-we optimize the excuse.