Justice & Law Quote by C. Northcote Parkinson

Parkinson’s “Law of Triviality” is a neat little booby trap for every committee that thinks it’s being rational. The line lands because it reverses our self-image: we imagine seriousness tracking stakes, but Parkinson observes the opposite. The bigger the sum, the more the room goes quiet, not out of wisdom but out of intimidation. High-cost decisions produce a kind of procedural paralysis. People fear looking ignorant, so they retreat into vagueness, defer to presumed experts, or hide behind “due diligence.”

Then the punchline: watch everyone come alive when the numbers get small. Trivial items are conversationally affordable. Anyone can have an opinion on the office bike shed, the coffee budget, the paint color. These topics reward performance over understanding: they let participants signal competence, diligence, even moral posture, with low risk and instant feedback. Parkinson is describing not merely inefficiency but a social economy of meetings, where airtime is spent where status can be safely earned.

The context matters. Parkinson, a historian with a satirist’s scalpel, wrote in the postwar era when bureaucracies ballooned and administrative process became a substitute for decision. His broader project (“Parkinson’s Law”) treated institutions as organisms that grow for reasons other than mission. Triviality is one mechanism: organizations drift toward the discussable, not the important.

The subtext is bleakly modern. The quote isn’t just about governments and committees; it’s about how groups manage anxiety. When consequences feel too large, we don’t rise to the occasion - we downshift into the comfort of minutiae.