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Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available.
Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.
It is now well known, however, that men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.
Perfection of planning is a symptom of decay. During a period of exciting discovery or progress, there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters.
No king or minister could have instructed Newton to discover the law of gravity, for they did not know and could not know that there was such a law to discover. No Treasury official told Fleming to discover penicillin. Nor was Rutherford instructed to split the atom by a certain date.
The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel and misrepresentation.
Parkinson's Law is a purely scientific discovery, inapplicable except in theory to the politics of the day. It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow.
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. General recognition of this fact is shown in the proverbial phrase "It is the busiest man who has time to spare."
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