MURPHY'S LAW:
If anything can go wrong, it will.

Murphy's First Corollary
Nothing is as easy as it looks.

Murphy's First Corollary:
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Murphy's Second Corollary:
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

Murphy's Constant:
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.

Quantized Revision of Murphy's Law:
Everything goes wrong all at once.

Quantization Revision of Murphy's Law
Everything goes wrong all at once.

Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics:
Things get worse under pressure.

Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics:
Things get worse under pressure.


                   Murphy's Laws
1.If anything can go wrong, it will.
2.If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
  will cause the most damage will be the first one to go wrong.
3.If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
4.If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something
  can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for,
  will promptly develop.
5.Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
6.If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked
  something.
7.Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
8.Mother nature is a bitch.

O'Toole's Commentary On Murphy's Laws:
Murphy was an optimist.

Murphy's Laws Of Computer Programming
I. Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
II. Any given program costs more and takes longer.
III. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
IV. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
V. Any program will expand to fill available memory.
VI. The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
VII. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capabilities of the programmer who must maintain it.
VIII. Any non-trivial program contains at least one bug.
IX. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.

Murphy's Military Laws
1. Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than you are.
2. No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
3. Friendly fire ain't.
4. The most dangerous thing in the combat zone is an officer with a map.
5. The problem with taking the easy way out is that the enemy has already mined it.
6. The buddy system is essential to your survival; it gives the enemy somebody else to shoot at.
7. The further you are in advance of your own positions, the more likely your artillery will shoot short.
8. Incoming fire has the right of way.
9. If your advance is going well, you are walking into an ambush.
10. The quartermaster has only two sizes, too large and too small.
11. If you really need an officer in a hurry, take a nap.
12. The only time suppressive fire works is when it is used on abandoned positions.
13. The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire.
14. There is nothing more satisfying than having someone take a shot at you, and miss.
15. Don't be conspicuous. In the combat zone, it draws fire. Out of the combat zone, it draws sergeants.
16. If your sergeant can see you, so can the enemy.
17. Never worry about the bullet with your name on it. Instead, worry about shrapnel addressed to 'occupant'.
18. All battles are fought at the junction oftwo or more map sheets.
18.1...uphill
18.2...and in the rain.
19. Logistics is the ball and chain of armoured warfare.
20. The army with the smartest dress uniform will lose.
21. What gets you promoted from one rank gets you killed in the next rank.
22. A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
23. If orders can be misunderstood, they have been.

Alma Hill's Corollary's to Murphy's Law:
If we lose much by having things go wrong, take all possible care.
If we have nothing to lose by change, relax.
If we have everything to gain by change, relax.
If it doesn't matter - it does not matter.

Gattuso's Extension of Murphy's Law
Nothing is ever so bad that it can't get worse.

Boucher's Corollary to Murphy's Law:
Murphy's Law holds no more than eighty per cent of the time; unfortunately, it is impossible to predict when.

Boucher's Corollary to Murphy's Law:
Murphy's Law holds no more than eighty per cent of the time; unfortunately, it is impossible to predict when.

Addition to Murphy's Laws
In nature, nothing is ever right. Therefore, if everything is going right...something is wrong.

            Murphy's Asymmetry Principle
Things go right gradually, but things go wrong all at once.

            Murphy's Flu Philosophy
You never have the right number of pills left on the last day of the
prescription.

            Murphy's Fourth Law for Husbands
Your wife's stored possessions will be on top of your stored
possessions.

            Murphy's Law of Revision
Once a mistake is corrected, a second mistake will become apparent.

            Murphy's Law of the Infinite
No matter how many things have gone wrong, there remains at least one
more thing that will go wrong.

            Murphy's Paradox
Doing it the hard way is always easier.

Murphy's Paradox
Doing it the hard way is always easier.

            Murphy's Rule of Auto Repair
No matter how minor the job is, it's still over $50.

            Murphy's Seventh Corollary
Every solution breeds new problems.

            Murphy's Sixth Corollary
Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done
first.

            Murphy's Theory of Automobiles
It's not a question of IF the car will break down, but WHEN it will
break down.

Murphy's Second Law of Construction
When taking something apart to fix a minor malfunction. You will cause a major malfunction.

Kohn's Corollary to Murphy's Law
Two wrongs are only the beginning.

Murphy's Fourth Law of the Kitchen
When the meal you are preparing is on schedule, the guests will be 45 minutes late. COROLLARY: When the guests are on time, the meal will be 45 minutes late.

Murphy's Third Law of the Kitchen
The mixing bowl you need is dirty.

Murphy's First Law for Wives
f you ask your husband to pick up five items at the store and then you add one more as an afterthought, he'll forget two of the first five.

Murphy's First Law for Husbands
If you run into an old girlfriend-no matter how innocently-your wife will know about it before you get home.

Murphy's Unavoidable Law of the Office
Copying machines mangle only important documents. COROLLARY: If a machine goes wild and runs off 180 copies, it will do so when you are copying a personal letter.

Murphy's Second Law for Wives
The snapshots you take of your husband are always more flattering than the ones he takes of you.

Murphy's Third Law for Wives
Whatever arrangement you make for the division of household duties, your husband's duties will be easier.

Murphy's Rule of the Term Paper
The book or periodical most vital to the completion of your term paper will be missing from the library.
COROLLARY: If it is available, the most important page will be torn out.

The Murphy Philosophy
Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse.

     Murphy's Famous Law - If anything can go wrong, it will - is said
to have entered history in 1949 at Edwards Air Force Base, when a
malfunctioning strap transducer moved a Capt. Murphy to his highest
eloquence.  Other truths attributed to Murphy are:  Nothing is ever as
simple as it seems.  Everything takes longer than you expect, and, left
to themselves, things always go from bad to worse.

     Since Murphy's extraordinary leap into immortality, many imitators
have sought in similar manner to plumb the human condition.  Perhaps
the most successful was British historian C. Northcote Parkinson, who
found that work expands to fill the time allotted to it.  Next in
notoriety is the (Lawrence) Peter Principle, that in every hierarchy
each employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence and remain
there fouling things up.

     Lesser known, but just as penetrating, are all the slippery laws
about money.  Those and other pearls have been collected by Paul
Dickson, whose book, "The Official Rules," will be published Nov. 27 by
Delacorte Press.  For example, there's Parkinson's Second Law, which
states that expenditures rise to meet income.  Further refined by
Dunn's Discovery - that the shortest measurable interval of time is the
time between the moment you put a little extra aside for a sudden
emergency and the arrival of that emergency.  This state of affairs is
summed up in Gumperson's Law: that after a rise in salary you will have
less money at the end of each month than you had before.

     With regard to products, Graditor's Laws:  (1) If it can break it
will, but only after the warranty expires, and (2) A necessary item
only goes on sale after you have purchased it at the regular price.  To
which, add Dyer's Discovery:  it's easy to tell when you've got a
bargain - it doesn't fit.  And Herblock's Law:  It it's good, they'll
stop making it.
     Car owners are well acquainted with Hartman Automotive Laws:
(1) Nothing minor ever happens to a car on the weekend.  (2) Nothing
minor ever happens to a car on a trip.  (3) Nothing minor ever happens
to a car.

     Which brings me to Goldwyn's Law of Contracts:  A verbal contract
isn't worth the paper it's written on.

     Law-giving actually precedes Murphy by a good many centuries.
Samuel Butler knew that all progress is based on the innate desire for
every organism to live beyond its income.  Josh Billings similarly
admonished: Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do
it.

     Another great name in the field is Finagle.  His unique
contributions came in the area of science, but Finagle's Laws on
Information apply equally to understanding financial transactions: (1)
The information you have is not what you want.  (2) The information you
want is not what you need.  (3) The information you need is not what
you can obtain.  (4) The information you can obtain costs more than you
want to pay.

     The difference between rich and poor is sharply caught by Getty's
Reminder, that the meek shall inherit the earth but not its mineral
rights.  Followed by the Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences:  Whoever has
the gold makes the rules.

     Donohue's Law says that what's worth doing is worth doing for
money.  And Goldfarber's Law, that under any system a few sharpies will
beat the rest of us.

     On pocketbook matters, everyone has to keep his eyes open.  It's
Gross's Law that when two people meet to decide how to spend a third
person's money, fraud will result.  As in O'Doyle's Corollary:  No
matter how many reporters share a cab, and no matter who pays, each
puts the full fare on his own expense account.

     Woody Allen said that the lion shall lay down with the lamb, but
the lamb won't get much sleep.  To which add Clopton's Law:  For every
credibility gap there's a gullibility fill.  The Checkbook Balancer's
Law holds that in matters of dispute, the bank's balance is always
smaller than yours.  But if you think the problem is bad now, Epstein
adds, just wait until we've solved it.

     Finally, Quinn's Law:  The reader interest generated by any
newspaper column is inversely proportional to the importance of its
subject.

Murphy's Laws

If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.

Murphy's Paradox
Doing it the hard way is always easier.

Quantization Revision of Murphy's Law
Everything goes wrong all at once.

LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE

Murphy's Seven Original Laws:
1. In any field of scientific endeavor, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
2. Left to themselves, things always to from bad to worse.
3. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will go wrong, is the one that will do the most damage.
4. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
5. Mother Nature is a bitch.
6. If everything seems to be going well, you obviously overlooked something.

McDonald's Corollary to Murphy's Law's: 
   In any given set of circumstances, the proper course of action is determined by subsequent events. 

Nagler's Comment of the Origin of Murphy's Law: 
   Murphy's Law was not propounded by Murphy, but by another man of the same name. 

Murphy's Fourth Law for Husbands
Your wife's stored possessions will always be on top of your stored possessions.


Murphy's Third Law for Husbands
The gifts you buy your wife are never as apropos as the gifts your neighbor buys his wife.

Murphy's Guide to Modern Science 1. If it's green or wriggles, it's biology. 2. If it stinks, it's chemistry. 3. If it doesn't work, it's physics.

Cole's Law:
Thinly sliced cabbage

Firestone's Law of Forecasting:
Chicken Little only has to be right once.

Manly's Maxim:
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

Grizzard's truism:
The trouble with most jobs is the job holder's resemblance to being one of a sled dog team. No one gets a change of scenery except the lead dog.

Cannon's Comment:
If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

Scott's Second Law:
When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to have been correct in the first place.

Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle's Second Law:
No matter what the experiment's result, there will always be someone eager to:
(a) misinterpret it.
(b) fake it.
or
(c) believe it supports his own pet theory.

Finagle's Third Law:
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.

Finagle's Fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.

Gumperson's Law:
The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its desirability.

Rudin's Law:
In crises that force people to choose among alternative courses of action, most people will choose the worst one possible.

Ginsberg's Restatement of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
You can't win.
You can't break even.
You can't quit.

Things will get worse before they will get better.
John Ehrman's Commentary:
Who said things would get better?

Commoner's Second Law of Ecology:
Nothing ever goes away.

Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.

Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving Systems Dynamics:
Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a bigger can.

Non-Reciprocal Law of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
Positive expectations yield negative results.

Klipstein's Law:
Tolerances will accumulate unidirectionally toward maximum difficulty of assembly.

Interchangeable parts won't.

You never find a lost article until you replace it.

Glatum's Law of Materialistic Acquisitiveness:
The perceived usefulness of an article is inversely proportional to its actual usefulness once bought and paid for.

Lewis' Law:
No matter how long or hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.

If nobody uses it, there's a reason.

You get the most of what you need the least.

The Airplane Law:
When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer to is on time.

Etorre's Observation:
The other line moves faster.

O'Brien's Variation:
If you change lines, the one you just left will start to move faster than the one you are now in.

The Queue Principal:
The longer you wait in line, the greater the likelihood that you are in the wrong line.

First Law of Revision:
Information necessitating a change of design will be conveyed to the designer after - and only after - the plans are complete. (Often called the 'Now They Tell Us' Law) 
Corollary I:
In simple cases, presenting one obvious right way versus one obvious wrong way, it is often wiser to choose the wrong way so as to expedite subsequent revision. 
H.B. Fyfe 
Second Law of Revision:
The more innocuous the modification appears to be, the further its influence will extend and the more plans will have to be redrawn.
H.B. Fyfe
Third Law of Revision:
If, when completion of a design is imminent, field dimensions are finally supplied as they actually are -- instead of as they were meant to be -- it is always simpler to start all over.
Corollary I:
It is usually impractical to to worry beforehand about interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for you.
H.B. Fyfe

Brook's Law
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. 

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
There's always one more bug.

Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

Law of the Perversity of Nature:
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.

Law of Selective Gravity:
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Jennings' Corollary to the Law of Selective Gravity:
The chance of the bread falling with the butter side down is directly proportional to the value of the carpet.

Wyszkowski's Second Law:
Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.

Sattinger's Law:
It works better if you plug it in.

Lowery's Law:
If it jams - force it.
If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

Schmidt's Law:
If you mess with a thing long enough, it'll break.

Anthony's Law of Force:
Don't force it - get a bigger hammer.

Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.

Gordon's First Law:
If a project is not worth doing at all, it's not worth doing well.

Law of Research:
Enough research will tend to support your theory.

Maier's Law:
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.

Peer's Law:
The solution to the problem changes the problem.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. 
- Bokonon

Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.

You can lead a man to slaughter, but you can't make him think.

Don't get mad, get even.

Carson's Law:
It's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick.

The Golden Rule:
He who has the gold, makes the rules.

Korman's conclusion:
The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come your way again.

Lennon's Law:
Life is what happens while you are making other plans.
Thomas la Mance

Maugham's Thought:
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Krueger's Observation:
A taxpayer is someone who does not have to take a civil service exam in order to work for the government.

Benchley's Law of Distinction:
There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.

Harver's Law:
A drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts.

Schmidt's Observation:
All things being equal, a fat person uses more soap than a thin person.

Gibb's Law:
Infinity is one lawyer waiting for another.

Fools rush in where fools have been before.

Rule of Accuracy:
When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer.

Inside every small problem is a large problem struggling to get out.

Wyszowski's Law:
No experiment is reproducible.

Fett's Law:
Never replicate a successful experiment.

Brooke's Law:
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.

The first Myth of Management:
It exists.

Spend sufficient time confirming the need and the need will disappear.

Peter's Placebo:
An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labour:
People are always available for work in the past tense.

Wiker's Law:
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
Tom Wicker

Clarke's First Law:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Clarke's Second Law:
The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.
Clarke's Third Law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The important thing is never to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein

Segal's Law:
A man with a watch knows what time it is.
A man with two watches is never sure.

Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who does not have to do it himself.

Weinberg's Second Law:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

Hartley's Second Law:
Never go to bed with anybody crazier than you are.

Beckhap's Law:
Beauty times brains equals a constant.

Katz's Law:
Men and women will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted.

Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
the population is growing.

Jones' Motto:
Friends come and go but enemies accumulate.

McClaughry's Codicil:
To make an enemy, do someone a favour.

Churchill's commentary on man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

The ultimate Law:
All general statements are false.
The Unspeakable Law:
As soon as you mention something;
if it is good, it goes away. if it is bad, it happens.

The Whispered Rule:
People will believe anything if you whisper it.

The First Law of Wing Walking:
Never let hold of what you've got until you've got hold of something else.

Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

Farnsdick's corollary:
After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself.

Lynch's Law:
When the going gets tough, everybody leaves.

Law of Revelation:
The hidden flaw never remains hidden.

Langsam's Law:
Everything depends.

Hellrung's Law:
If you wait, it will go away.
Shevelson's Extension:
... having done its damage.
Grelb's Addition:
... if it was bad, it will be back.

Grossman's Misquote: (of H.L. Mencken)
Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers.

Ducharme's Precept:
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.

First Postulate of Isomurphism:
Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.

The Unapplicable Law:
Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work.

Witten's Law:
Whenever you cut your fingernails, you will find a need for them an hour later.

Perkin's postulate:
The bigger they are, the harder they hit.

Harrison's Postulate:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Conway's Law:
In every organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on.
This person must be fired.

Stewart's Law of Retroaction:
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

MacDonald's Second Law:
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and give it back to them.

First Law of Laboratory Work:
Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.

Handy Guide to Modern Science:
1. If it's green or it wiggles, it's biology.
2. If it stinks, it's chemistry.
3. If it doesn't work, it's physics.
4. If it's incomprehensible, it's mathematics.
5. If it doesn't make sense, it's either economics or psychology.

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

The Sausage Principle:
People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either one being made.

Horngren's Observation: (generalized)
The real world is a special case.

Merkin's Maxim:
When in doubt, predict that the present trend will continue.

Hawkin's Theory of Progress:
Progress does not consist of replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is right. It consists of replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is more subtly wrong.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Matz's warning:
Beware of the physician who is great at getting out of trouble.

Gold's Law:
If the shoe fits, it's ugly.

Lewis' Law:
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
Sinclair Lewis

Law of Reruns:
If you have watched a TV series only once, and you watch it again, it will be a rerun of the same episode.

Shirley's Law:
Most people deserve each other.

Forgive and remember.

Woltman's Law:
Never program and drink beer at the same time.

Gallois' Revelation:
If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled, and no one dares to criticize it.

Galbraith's Law of Political Wisdom:
Anyone who says he is not going to resign, four times, definitely will.

Allen's Law:
Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

Allen's Distinction:
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.

You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

Avery's Observation:
It does not matter if you fall down as long as you pick up something from the floor while you get up.

Berra's Law:
You can observe a lot just by watching.

Bicycle Law:
All bicycles weigh 50 pounds:
A 30 pound bicycle needs a 20 pound lock. A 40 pound bicycle needs a 10 pound lock. A 50 pound bicycle doesn't need a lock.

Cohen's Law:
What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts, not the facts themselves.

Comin's Law:
People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.

Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damned near zero.

Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
1. An object in motion will be heading in the wrong direction.
2. An object at rest will be in the wrong place.

Goldwyn's Law of Contracts:
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

Jones' Principle:
Needs are a function of what other people have.

Langin's Law:
If things were left to chance, they'd be better.

In America, it's not how much an item costs that matters, it's how much you save.

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, maybe you just don't understand the situation.

Mencken's Metalaw:
For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution;
and it is always wrong.

Sevareid's Law:
The chief cause of problems is solutions.

Thoreau's Law:
If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intention of doing you good, you should run for your life.

Peer's Law:
The solution to the problem changes the problem.

Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.

Lyall's Conjecture:
If a computer cable has one end, then it has another.

Lyall's Fundamental Observation:
The most important leg of a three legged stool is the one that's missing.

Pournelle's Law of Costs and Schedules:
Everything costs more and takes longer.

Klipstein's Lament:
All warranty and guarantee clauses are voided by payment of the invoice.

Klipstein's Observation:
Any product cut to length will be too short.

Sueker's Note:
If you need n items of anything, you will have n - 1 in stock.

Rosenfield's Regret:
The most delicate component will be dropped.

de la Lastra's Law:
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has
been removed.
de la Lastra's Corollary:
After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws, it will be discovered that the gasket has been ommitted.

Design flaws travel in groups.

You can't fight the law of conservation of energy but you sure can bargain with it.

Gerrold's Fundamental Truth:
It's a good thing money can't buy happiness. We couldn't stand the commercials.

Gerrold's Law:
A little ignorance can go a long way.
Lyall's Addendum:
... in the direction of maximum harm.

Gerrold's Pronouncement:
The difference between a politician and a snail is that a snail leaves its slime behind.

When a man laughs at his misfortunes, he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their perogative.
H. L. Mencken

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
H. L. Mencken

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sure sign he expects to be paid for it.
H. L. Mencken

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
H.L. Mencken

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
H. L. Mencken

Arcana Coelestica:
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that obtained by Christ. 
Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. Mencken

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
H. L. Mencken

Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful who know when to play with it and when
to leave it alone.
H.L. Mencken

In human history, a moral victory is always a disaster for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
H.L. Mencken

There is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous crime for him to prove it.
H.L. Mencken

The Arithmetic of Cooperation:
When you're adding up committees there's a useful rule of thumb:
that talents make a difference,
and follies make a sum.
Piet Hein

The Ultimate Wisdom:
Philosophers must ultimately find their true perfection in knowing all the follies of mankind by introspection.
Piet Hein

Technologies don't transfer.
Conrad Stenton

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
Herbert Hoover

There are four things that hold back human progress;
ignorance, stupidity, committees, and accountants.
Charles J.C. Lyall

There is something to be said for every error;
but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.
G. K. Chesterton

Be kind to everyone you talk with. You never know who's going to be on the jury.
Tiger Goldstick

The only time the world beats a path to your door is when you are in the bathroom.

When all is said and done, more is said than done.

Finance is the study of money and how it violates the rules of mathematics and common sense.

Horwood's First Law:
Good data is the data you already have.
Horwood's Second Law:
Bad data drives out good.
Horwood's Third Law:
The data you have for the present crisis was collected to relate to the previous one.
Horwood's Fourth Law:
The respectability of existing data grows with elapsed time and distance from the data source to the investigator.
Horwood's Fifth Law:
Data can be moved from one office to another but it cannot be created or destroyed.
Horwood's Sixth Law:
If you have the right data you have the wrong problem; and vice versa.
Horwood's Seventh Law:
The important thing is not what you do, but how you measure it.
Horwood's Eighth Law:
In complex systems, there is no relationship between information gathered and decisions made.
Horwood's Ninth Law:
Acquisition of knowledge from experience is an exception.
Horwood's Tenth Law:
Knowledge grows at half the rate at which academic courses proliferate.

Cheops Law:
No project was ever completed on time and within budget.

No man knows what true happiness is until he gets married. By then, of course, its too late.

The best scale for an experiment is 12 inches to the foot.
Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher

What's source for the goose is object for the gander.
Stan Kelly-Bootle

Kelly-Bootle's Law of Programming:
The sooner you start coding, the longer it is going to take.

Gershwin's Law:
It ain't necessarily so.

Kelly-Bootle's pith poor law:
Terseness is not enough.

Science is to computer science as hydraulics is to plumbing.
Stan Kelly-Bootle

The Seven Catastrophes of Computing:
The user, the manufacturer, the model, the salesperson, the operating system, the language, and the application.
Stan Kelly-Bootle

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
Brendan Behan

Alinsky's Rule for Radicals:
Those who are the most moral are furthest from the problem.

Where there's a will, there's a won't.

Olivier's Law:
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Weiner's Law of Libraries:
There are no answers, only cross-references.

Searle's Third Law:
You win a few, you loose a lot.

Sodd's Second Law:
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur.

Berra's Second Law:
Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked.

Heise's Law of Anatomy:
When the mouth opens, the ears slam shut.

Foster's Law:
The only people who find what they are looking for in life are the fault finders.

There are two kinds of people in any organization:
those who fix the problems, and those who fix the blame.
The latter are called managers.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Weatherwax's Postulate:
The degree with which you overreact to information will be in inverse proportion to its accuracy.

Schopenhauer's Law of Entropy:
If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel of wine, you get
sewage.

Munder's Theorem:
For every '10', there are ten '1's.

Levy's Eighth Law:
No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.
Strong's Reply:
Genius cannot be fruitful without due consideration and attention to detail.

Zappa's Law:
There are two things which are truly universal:
hydrogen and stupidity.

Fagin's observation:
Hindsight is an exact science.

First rule of History:
History doesn't repeat itself; historians merely repeat one another.

Ehler's First Law:
When you find out how far you can go, you've gone too far.

Good's Rule of Bureaucracies:
When the government's remedies do not solve the problem, you modify the problem, not the remedy.

Sigstad's Law:
When it gets to be your turn, they change the rules.

Roger's Law:
As soon as the stewardess serves coffee, the aircraft encounters turbulence.
Davis' Explanation:
Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.

Bachman's Law:
The greater the cost of putting a plan into operation, the less chance of abandoning it.
Bachman's Corollary:
The higher the level of prestige accorded the people behind a plan, the less chance of abandoning it.

Cohn's First Law:
In any bureaucracy, paperwork increases as you spend more and more time reporting on the less and less you are doing.
Cohn's Second Law:
In any bureaucracy, stability is achieved when you spend all of your time reporting on the nothing you are doing.

Kushner's Law:
The chances of anybody doing anything are inversely proportional to the number of other people who are in a position to do it
instead.

Law of Probable Distribution:
Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.

Gourd's Axiom:
A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.

Wethern's Law:
Assumption is the mother of all screwups.

Steinbach's Advice to Systems Programmers:
Never test for an error you don't know how to handle.

Rule of Defactualization:
Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.

Maier's Second Law:
The bigger the theory, the better.

Only adults have difficulty with child proof bottles.

Barach's Rule:
An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his physician.

Matz's Medication Rule:
A drug is that substance which, when injected into a rat, will produce a scientific report.

G.B. Shaw's Law:
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach.
Martin's Extension:
Those who can't teach, administrate.
Lyall's Insight:
The above completely explains sex education.

Conner's Second Law:
If something is confidential, it will be left in the copier.

Hane's Law:
There is no limit to how bad things can get.

Edward's Law:
If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

Boren's Laws:
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
When in charge, ponder.

Forsyth's Law:
Just when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, the roof caves in on you.

Variables won't; constants aren't.

The one language spoken by all programmers is profanity.

The only two things a pirate will run for is money and public office.
Yosemite Sam

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science, it is opinion.
Robert A. Heinlein

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
Robert A. Heinlein

Ninety percent of everything is crud.
Theodore Sturgeon

One good turn gets most of the blanket.

A virtual data base is a segment of your imagination.

On a clear disk, you can seek forever.

Octal is just like base 10, really, if you're missing two fingers.
Tom Lehrer

Disks travel in packs.

I believe in computer dating, but only if the computers are truly in love.
Groucho Marx

Reciprocity works both ways.

The Universe is not user friendly.
Kelvin Throop

Science policy is to science as bird shot is to birds.
Petr Beckman

Remember, a rut is simply a coffin with the ends knocked out.
Earl Nightengale

Computer programs are ninety percent debugged, fifty per cent of the time.

To err is human, but to REALLY foul things up, it takes a computer driven by a programmer who only thinks he knows what he is
doing.
Walter Aiello

Tusseman's Law:
Nothing is an inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.

One can never underestimate the intelligence of the electorate.
Walter Aiello

Any given container designed to hold water, will leak, and any given orifice designed to drain water, will plug up. 
Walter Aiello

You don't learn less and less, you learn more and more. Hence you should not call them lessons but rather morons.
Lewis Carroll

If people behaved like governments, you'd call the cops.
Kelvin Throop

Alcoholism is what happens when good liquor falls into the hands of amateurs.
Spider Robinson

If God had really intended man to fly, he would have made it easier to get to the airports.

It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -- but thats the way to bet it.
Damon Runyon

All of life is seven to five against.
Damon Runyon

Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm is two small jumps.
David Lloyd George

No one ever raised a statue to a critic.
Jean Sibelius

Originality is the art of concealing your source.
Franklin P. Jones

Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings.
C.D. Jackson

Old programming wizards never die, they just recurse.
Allen Supynuk

If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they wouldn't reach a conclusion.
Lewis Carroll

Those who live by the crystal ball must be prepared to eat crushed glass.
Larry Long

There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.
Goethe

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
Abraham Maslow

A closed mouth gathers no foot.

First Rule of Intelligent Tinkering:
Save all the parts.

Hofstadter's Law:
The time and effort required to complete a project are always more than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's
Law.

Incompetence knows no barriers of time and place.

Make it possible to write programs in English and you will find that most programmers cannot write in English.

Block's Bombshell:
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

Ogden's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.

Shick's Law:
There is no problem a good miracle can't solve.

Spencer's Laws of Data:
Anyone can make a good decision given enough facts.
A good manager can make a decision without enough facts.
A perfect manager can operate in perfect ignorance.

Statistics are like bikinis: what they reveal is suggestive, what they conceal is vital.

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains because the average man can see better than he can think.

Organizations are like wine;
the bottleneck is always at the top.

The plural of spouse is spice.
Edgar Pangborn

In theory, the difference between theory and practice is small.
In practice, the difference between theory and practice is large.

Two wrongs do not make a right; it usually takes three or four.

Mayhis Rule:
It is bad luck to be superstitious.

Bureaucaracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
Laurence J. Peter

One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.
Heinrich Heine

It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion.
William Ralph Inge

Rascality has limits; stupidity has none.
Napoleon

Politics is occupational therapy for the morally handicapped.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Fundamental Tenet of Reform:
Reforms come from below. No man who has four aces ever calls for a new deal.
John F. Parker

Beauregard's Law:
When you are up to your eyeballs in it, keep your mouth shut.

Murchison's Law of Money:
Money is like manure. If you spread it around, it does a lot of good. If you pile it up in one place, it stinks.

When all else fails, blame it on the oil industry.

Laotion Proverb:
When drowning, it is all right to be a fatalist, but one should still move one's feet.

He who hesitates is smart.

It is only when you need to knock on wood that you realize that the world is entirely made up of aluminum and plastic.

A person who says that something can't be done shouldn't interrupt the person doing it.

The difference between an amateur and a professional in the computer business is the number of backups they make.

The secret to dealing successfully with people is sincerity.
Once you can fake sincerity, you've got it made.

The person who offers unsolicited advice usually discovers its value.

Modern journalists are much like modern novelists; they both write fiction. The difference is that the novelists are honest about it.
Charles J.C. Lyall

It is easy to tell when a politician is lying. Watch his lips. If they move, he's lying.

Hell is the place where everything test perfectly and nothing works.
John W. Campbell Jr.

Fleas can be taught nearly everything that a congressman can.
Mark Twain

In the first place God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made school boards.
Mark Twain

Of course, America had been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde

American women expect to find in their husbands the perfection that the English women only hope to find in their butlers.
W. Somerset Maugham

Canadians could have enjoyed:
English Government, French Culture, and American know-how.
Instead they ended up with:
English know-how, French Government, and American culture.
John Robert Colombo

Heaven for climate; hell for society.
Mark Twain

Put not your trust in princes.
Psalms 146:3

Democracy is a form of religion. It is the worship
of jackals by jackasses.
H.L. Mencken

You just can't tell about women; and if you can, you shouldn't.
Charles M.M. Lyall

Maxey's Maxim:
No matter what happens, there is always someone who knew it would.

Sprinkle's Law:
Things fall at right angles.

The finer a highway is, the more people crowd it to unusability.
John W. Campbell Jr.

Always leave a way out.
John W. Campbell Jr.

Myer's First Law:
Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
Myer's Second Law:
Experiments must be reproducible -- they should fail the same way.
Myer's Third Law:
Always verify your witchcraft. 
Myer's Fourth Law:
First draw your curves -- then plot your readings.
Myer's Fifth Law:
Be sure to obtain meteorological information before leaving on vacation.
Myer's Sixth Law:
A record of data is useful -- it indicates that you have been working.
Myer's Seventh Law:
Experience is directly proportional to equipment ruined.
Myer's Eighth Law:
To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.
Myer's Ninth Law:
In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

In an experiment, nothing can go wrong; we can always rely on the physical universe to run as designed.
Wayne Batteau

If you can't detect it, why worry?
John W. Campbell

Rothstein's Observation:
The one part that the fabriacation plant forgot to ship you supports seventy five per cent of the balance of the shipment.
Rothstein's Corollory:
Not only did they forget to ship it; fifty per cent of the time they haven't even made it..
Rothstein's Note:
Truck deliveries that normally take one day will take five when you're waiting for the truck.
Rothstein's Advice:
The eye of the Chief Inspecting Engineer is more accurate than the finest instrument.

Nobody likes being proven wrong.
A scientist is a man who develops powerful proofs.
Therefore, nobody likes scientists.
John W. Campbell Jr.

Law of the Too, Too Solid Point:
In any collection of data, the figure that is most obviously correct -- beyond any need of checking -- is the mistake.
Corollary I:
No one whom you ask for help will see it either.
Corollary II:
Everyone who stops by with unsought advice will see it immediately.
H.B. Fyfe

If the liberal arts do nothing else, they provide engaging metaphors for the thinking they displace.
Roger Zelazny

The only thing wrong with doing nothing is that you never know when you are finished.

Remember, the absent are always wrong.

Coffee makes a worker wise and able to see through half closed eyes.

Indecision is the key to flexibility.

Nothing motivates an employee more than to see the boss do an honest day's work.

Law of Forgetfulness:
The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional to ... proportional to ... to ...

Nine tenths of a woman's intuition is suspicion.
Bob Edwards

Blessed are the pretty girls, for they shall inherit the men.
Bob Edwards

A woman's idea of heaven is a place where she won't have to wash the dishes.
Bob Edwards

It's awfully hard for a woman to pretend not to know the things she ought to know.
Bob Edwards

We actually need women in provincial politics. Women could never possibly participate in any graft system, owing to their inability to
keep a secret. As publicity is the remedy for most political ills, women in politics should function admirably.
Bob Edwards (1911)

Women will never make good on juries until they get to be as ignorant as men.
Bob Edwards

Politics has not ceased to make strange bedfellows, or, at least the politicians of both parties continue to share the same bunk. You
know the kind of bunk we mean.
Edwards

Politicians resemble shoes in one respect -- the higher grade is not machine made.
Bob Edwards

It seems as if the world is divided into two sets of people --
one set engaged in making money by productive labour and
the other set are simultaneously engaged in taking it away from them.
Bob Edwards

A man can claim to have "arrived" when his private affairs begin to interest the public.
Bob Edwards

A girl seldom falls in love with a man unless there is some reason why she shouldn't.
Bob Edwards

Every man has his favourite bird. Ours is the bat.
Bob Edwards

The report that whiskey drinking is declining in Calgary will cause no surprise. Most of the politicians are out of town telling the
festive farmer which way to vote.
Bob Edwards

Soaking the brain in alcohol does not improve the mind.
Bob Edwards

The water wagon is certainly a more dangerous vehicle than the automobile. At least more people fall off it.
Bob Edwards

Call a girl a chick and she smiles; call a woman a hen and she howls. Call a young woman a witch and she is pleased;
call an old woman a witch and she is indignant.
Call a girl a kitten and she rather likes it;
call a woman a cat and she hates you.
Women are queer.
Bob Edwards

A man who hesitates is lost. So is a woman who doesn't.
Bob Edwards

A girl's kisses are like pickles in a bottle --
the first are hard to get, but the rest come easy.
Bob Edwards

Too much distance between husband and wife may result in other enchantments. (This is a deep one.)
Bob Edwards

The only thing that beats a good wife is a bad husband.
Bob Edwards

It is easy for a man to manage his wife. All he has to do is follow her instructions.
Bob Edwards

When we hear a woman say that all men are alike we wonder how she found out.
Bob Edwards

All the world's a stage, and the majority of us sit in the gallery and throw things at the performers.
Bob Edwards

If you want anything done well, do it yourself. This is why most people laugh at their own jokes.
Bob Edwards

The things that come to a man who waits are seldom the things he has been waiting for.
Bob Edwards

A man begins to get his life into proper perspective when he quits expecting to find pearls in his oysters and is extremely gratified
when he gets oysters.
Bob Edwards

It is a waste of life to be sensible all the time.
Bob Edwards

No man does as much today as he is going to do tomorrow.
Bob Edwards

Most of the entries in the human race are also rans.
Bob Edwards

Remorse is memory that has begun to ferment.
Bob Edwards

A man never looses money on fast horses. It is the slow ones that cause all the damned trouble.
Bob Edwards

Don't you think "absolutely" a much overworked word, Absolutely.
Bob Edwards

If money talks, all it ever said to me was goodbye.
Bob Edwards

When Solomon said that there was a time and a place for everything he had not encountered the problem of parking an automobile.
Bob Edwards

The first thing a man with a new automobile runs into is debt.
Bob Edwards

The trouble with being efficient is that it makes everybody hate you so.
Bob Edwards

The income tax returns would indicate that there is untold wealth in Canada.
Bob Edwards

Taking things philosophically is easy if they don't concern you.
Bob Edwards

Never exaggerate your faults; your friends will attend to that.
Bob Edwards

Forgive your enemies -- but if you have no enemies,forgive a few of your friends.
Bob Edwards

A tongue, like a race horse, generally runs faster the less weight it carries.
Bob Edwards

Most of life's shadows result from standing in your own light.
Bob Edwards

The man who has never tried has no sympathy for the man who has tried and failed.
Bob Edwards

Some people might as well be crazy for all the sense they have.
Bob Edwards

Meanwhile the meek are a long time inheriting the earth.
Bob Edwards

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.
Bob Edwards

Isn't it queer that only sensible people agree with you?
Bob Edwards

The way of the transgressor is ever popular.
Bob Edwards

If its all the same to history, it need not repeat itself anymore.
Bob Edwards

Well, at all events, the Canadian Navy will be able to lick the Swiss Navy. This is one comfort for which we should be thankful.
Bob Edwards

Not all women are as bad as they paint themselves.
Bob Edwards

If men could read woman's thoughts, they would take more risks than they do.
Bob Edwards

It is as easy to recall an unkind word as to draw back a bullet after firing a gun.
Bob Edwards

Never judge a man by the opinion his wife has of him. Be fair.
Bob Edwards

McCrum's Maxim:
ASCII no questions and I'll TELETYPE you no lies.

Trial marriages are very dangerous. If you're not careful, they could lead to the real thing.
Warren Beatty

The greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be.
ao-Tzu (604-531 B.C.)

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
Frederick Douglas, 1883

Ignorance and stupidity are not the same thing. At the battle at Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse was an ignorant savage and George
Custer was an educated military tactician and strategist. Custer was also stupid; Crazy Horse wasn't.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Feminist theologians tell us that God is female. But, what about the devil? What about her?
Charles J.C. Lyall

Never try to explain integrity to a lawyer.
Charles J.C. Lyall

There may be a market for artificial intelligence but there is a larger market for artificial stupidity.
Charles J.C. Lyall

In a severe crisis, make sure you have a good stock of the precious metals; gold, silver, and lead. The first two make lousy bullets.
Charles J.C. Lyall

There are only three predators that strike fear into the average man; the man eating shark, a pack of wolves, and the tax
department.
Charles J.C. Lyall

The early worm gets eaten.

Never tell an accountant that he is a credit to his profession.
A good accountant is a debit to his profession.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Consultants know more ways of doing things than their clients and they can do it better than their clients; most of the time, they end
up doing it the client's way and trying to make the client like it. Consultants are the business equivalent of the high priced whore.
Charles J.C. Lyall

The problem with the war between the sexes is that neither side has much compassion for the casualties.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Any computer system can be rendered ineffective by its users.
Charles J.C. Lyall

No one can design a completely idiot proof system; idiots are too smart.
Charles J.C. Lyall

A poorly managed manual system cannot be improved by automation. The problem is not the system, it's the manager.
Charles J.C. Lyall

All systems have three aspects:
there is the official system which is written down;
there is the system which the managers administer,
and there is the system actually implemented by the employees.
It is very similar to the Christian theology of the holy trinity.
Charles J.C. Lyall

The best way to improve the educational system would be to turn it over to private enterprise. Not that the companies could
necessarily do it any better, but the education department would suddenly find the deficiencies intolerable.
Charles J.C. Lyall

A person in the 100% tax bracket is called a slave.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Statistics are methods of quantifying ignorance. When an intellectual tells you that it is only a probability that the sun will rise
tomorrow morning, he is indicating his ignorance of Newton's Laws.
Charles J.C. Lyall

A cynic is a person who refuses to share your illusions.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Media is the plural of mediocre.
Rocky Bridges

They don't make things like they used to, and what's more they never did.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Don't lie. It is a crime to impersonate a politician.
Don't steal. It is a crime to compete with the government.
The Lord giveth and the government taketh away.

Socialists, like aristocrats, divide people into social classes and encourage discrimination against the "out" classes. Fascists, on
the other hand, divide people by nationality and discriminate against the "out" nationalities. Fascism is very popular these days,
especially among the socialists.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Nationalism is an infantile idea; it is the measles of mankind.
Albert Einstein

A bureaucracy is an organization that has raised stupidity to the status of a religeon.
Frank Herbert

In one respect the Greeks had a firmer grasp of psychology than we do. When their society produced a sociopathic personality,
they banished him; we elect him.
Charles J.C. Lyall

A bureaucracy will first act to save its own existence and secondly it will act to expand itself. It will never act in a fashion that will
ensure its own destruction. The anti-cancer bureaucracy will never find a cure for cancer.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Some people think that the tax department are thieves. This is nonsense. The tax department does not steal; it simply threatens you
with dire consequences if you do not give them the money they want. This is not theft. It is extortion. 
Charles J.C. Lyall

The beaver has a completely unjustified reputation for hard work. What it energetically dot with a vicious temper and is the perfect
symbol for the Canadian government.
Charles J.C. Lyall

There are several occupations that should be de-criminalized because they provide a useful social function. Among them are
prostitution and political assassination.
Charles J.C. Lyall

When a person says that technology is "out of control", he usually means that it is out of his control. This is usually a good thing.
Charles J.C. Lyall

The greatest deficiency in educational systems is that they almost never offer courses in thinking.

It has been determined that mankind and chimpanzees have 99 per cent of their genetic material in common. This annoys both the
creationists and the chimps.
Charles J.C. Lyall

The more obvious the defect in a plan, the more likely it will be approved.

The AIDS epidemic may well bring the end of our species.
Homo Sapien will be supplanted by Hetero Sapien.

Schedules are never drawn up by the people who will have to keep them.

The more sensible and simple your plan, the more likely your supervisor will change it.

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a plan to pass unchanged through a committee.

Lyall's Regret:
Waist not, diet not.

In the ultimate utopia, only three things would be illegal:
- the initiation of force;
- the act of fraud and;
- Monday mornings.
Charles J.C. Lyall

You've gotta know when to code 'em, know when to modem,
Know when to load 'em up, know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the keyboard;
There'll be time enough for countin' when the program's done.

You can slide further on bullshit than you can on sand.
Don McKee

Marriage is made in heaven; so is thunder and lightning.

Hindsight is diffraction limited.
R.E. Fisher

Many students treat knowledge as a liquid to be swallowed rather than as a solid to be chewed, and then they wonder why it
provides so little nourishment.

Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and vigour.

First Law of Business Meetings:
The probability that the lead pencil will break is directly proportional to the importance of the notes being taken.

The Grocery Bag Law:
The candy bar you had planned to eat on the way home from the market is hidden at the bottom of the grocery bag.

Brasington's First Law:
You will never use the backup copy you just made.
Brasington's Second Law:
The only backup copy you will ever need is either:
- the one you didn't have time to make, or;
- the one you did make but cannot read.
Brasington's Third Law:
There is no danger in x-raying a scratch disk or tape. However, a boy scout's magnet can destroy the only copy of a file at 50 yards.
Brasington's Fourth Law:
The probability that a given program will conform to expectations is inversely proportional to the programmer's confidence in his
ability to do the job.
Brasington's Fifth Law:
When a programmer tells you 'no problem', you have a serious problem.
Brasington's Wisdom:
When a programmer commits to a completion date, make sure it includes day, month, and year.
Brasington's Irrefutable Observation:
State of the art software is not. User friendly software also is not. State of the art user friendly software, is an edp insider's joke.
Brasington's Sixth Law:
No system is ever completely debugged. Attempts to debug it invariably introduce new bugs which are even harder to find.
Brasington's Seventh Law:
Projects progress quickly until they become 90% complete, then they remain 90% complete forever.
Brasington's Insight:
One advantage of fuzzy project objectives is that they let you avoid the embarrassement of estimating the costs.
Brasington's Eighth Law:
If project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.
Brasington's Ninth Law:
A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned one will take only twice as
long.
Brasington's Note:
Project teams detest project reporting because it vividly manifests their lack of progress.

Liebling's Truth:
Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.
A.J. Liebling

Austen's Aphorism:
Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony.

People fail to respect the law when the laws fail to deserve respect.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Traditions are solutions for which we have forgotten the problems.

Information is power. To give out correct information at the correct time is to control the present; to withhold information at the
correct time is to control the future.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Our analytical tools are primitive; almost all of our problems are solvable but few yield to analysis. Consider the future; we cannot
predict it, but assuredly we are creating it. Most of our problems are subsets of this solvable problem.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Mankind makes tools; we use them to augment our hands, arms and legs. The computer augments the brain and this makes it very
unpopular with totalitarians.
Charles J.C. Lyall

Life's a batch, and then you submit.
Steve Rosborough.

Every life form on Earth either has become extinct or will become extinct.
That is why the human race will build star ships.
Charles J.C. Lyall

The only people that successfully resist change in society are the dead.
Charles J.C. Lyall

A hug is the perfect gift -- one size fits all, and nobody minds if you exchange it.
Ivern Ball

Absolutely nothing in the world is as friendly as a wet dog.
Dan Bennet

The medieval alchemist said there were four states of matter:
Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. On the other hand, we know that there really are four states of matter: Solid, Liquid, Gas and Plasma.
Thank God for progress.
Kelvin Throop

Once you get to orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.
Robert A. Heinlein

An economist is a man who tells you what to do with the money you would not have if you had followed his proposal in the first place.
Kelvin Throop

Policy: A common substitute for good judgement.
Kelvin Throop

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make President.
Kelvin Throop

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. If that doesn't work, look for a better solution.
Kelvin Throop

And the Lord said unto Job, "There's no reason for it. It's just policy."
Kelvin Throop

If the mind were exercised as much as the mouth, we would be a race of geniuses.
Kelvin Throop

A self addressed envelope would be addressed "envelope".
Kelvin Throop

In matters of belief, he who is absolutely sure he is right is almost certainly dead wrong.
Kelvin Throop

God doesn't want to make it too easy for his children --many of them are spoiled enough as it is.
Kelvin Throop

To get the attention of a large animal, be it an elephant or a bureaucracy, it helps to know what part of it feels pain. Be very sure,
though, that you want its full attention.
Kelvin Throop

There is no such thing as a functional illiterate.
Kelvin Throop

The number of people who agree or disagree with you has absolutely no bearing on whether you're right. The universe has a way of
deciding that for itself.
Kelvin Throop

Just because we're not currently using a technology doesn't mean that it doesn't work anymore.
Kelvin Throop

Jargon (or "technical terminology") is a marvelous way to convey a lot of information to the knowledgeable. It's also a superb way to
intimidate the uninitiated. Why do you suppose it was developed?
Kelvin Throop

Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather reports and economists.
Kelvin Throop

Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.
Lily Tomlin

Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right.
Kurt Herbert Adler

Love is the answer, but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.
Woody Allen

Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right.
Woody Allen

Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three major catagories -- those that don't work, those that break down, and those
that get lost.
Russel Baker

Heblock's Horror:
If it's good, they'll stop making it.

Creativity is inverse to experience.
Decision levels are inverse to comprehension.
Size of error is inverse to elapsed time.
Derek Hutchins

Cayo's Law:
The only things that start on time are those that you're late for.

Arndt's Truism:
If you have never made a mistake, you have never made anything.
Lyall's curmudgeonly addendum:
... or anyone.

More programming sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason
including stupidity.
William A. Wulf

Porter's Strategem for future dilemmas:
We'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Walton's Observation:
Given two choices, you'll make the wrong one -- twice.

Takeovers are always announced one day after you sell the stock of the target company.
Gluskin-Fagan Report

Time-tested investment strategies stop working as soon as you put your money into them.
Gluskin-Fagan Report

The next bull market will begin on the day you swear never to touch another stock as long as you live.
Gluskin-Fagan Report

The only hot stock market tips that work are those you have ignored.
Gluskin-Fagan Report

The trouble with planners is that they often undertake vast projects using half vast ideas.

Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible stupidity can usually be traced to an organization.
Jon Bentley

Testing can show the presence of bugs but not their absence.
Edsger W. Dijkstra

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Bert Lance
If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
Walt Weir
If it might break, don't go near it.
Herbert Stein

The fastest I/O is no I/O.
Nils-Peter Nelson

The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer system are those that aren't there.
Gorden Bell

Eschew Clever Rules.
Joe Condon

Make it work first before you make it work fast.
Bruce Whiteside

Bulls do not win bullfights: people do.
People do not win people fights: lawyers do.
Norman R. Augustine

Augustine's Fundamental Law of Aeronautics:
Never fly on an airplane with a tail number less than 10.

Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics: i.e., it always
increases.
Norman R. Augustine

It is better to be a reorganizer than a reorganizee.
Norman R. Augustine

The optimum committee has no members.
Norman R. Augustine

Two thirds of the earth's surface is covered with water. The other two thirds is covered with auditors from headquarters.
Norman R. Augustine

If the error rate is high enough to be measured, it's too high.
Bill Godbout

The most effective way to increase the reliability of software that we currently know about is simply to make it understandable and
predictable.
Nancy Leveson

Experiment and theory often show remarkable agreement when performed in the same laboratory.
Daniel Bershader

The world is divided into three kinds of people -- those who can count and those who can't.
Mick Racky

Swanson's Principle of Prelusive Programming: Hardware will learn to emulate any software bug within one hour of its removal.

A human mind is monumentally harder to change than a bed.
Lois McMaster Bujold

There are three kinds of medical experiments:
Single Blind: The patients don't know if they got the drug or the placebo.
Double blind: The doctors don't know either.
Triple Blind: The administrators have lost the key and nobody will ever know.

Newton's Law - revised in Ottawa:
For each and every decision, an equal amount of time, energy, and money shall be spent auditing that decision.

Boyle's First Law:
The success of any venture will be helped by prayer, even in the wrong denomination.
Boyle's Second Law:
An original idea will never emerge from a committee in the original form.
Boyle's Third Law: If not controlled, work will flow to the competent employee until he or she is submerged.

Dieter's Law:
Food that tastes best has the highest number of calories.

Foster's Query:
If the polls are so accurate, why are there so many polling companies?

Those who know little soon repeat it.

The less an organization produces, the more frequently it re-organizes.

Mediocrity imitates.

No boss will keep an employee who is right all of the time.

An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

Trivial laws are promptly voted in; important ones never are.

Nothing is illegal if 100 business men decide to do it.

Otto's Observation:
The color of any paint formula, as shown by the manufacturer's sample, bears no resemblance to the actual color of that formula
when applied to any surface.
Otto's Corollary:
No two samples of any paint formula, when prepared at two different times, look anything like each other.

The Price/Earnings ratio doesn't mean anything when there is no E.
Raymond Rose

To catch a mouse, make a noise like a cheese.
Lewis Kornfeld

The disagreements between theoretical and experimental results can generally be resolved if one multiplies the experimental
findings by a factor equal to the ratio of the theoretical expectation to the experimental measurement.
Wilder Bancroft

The ratio is also known as Finnagle's variable constant.
CJCL

Adding people to speed up a late software project just makes it later.
Fred Brooks

Attempting to read a roadmap while driving causes all traffic lights to turn green.
Rene Augustine

When forty million people believe in a dumb idea, it's still a dumb idea.

O'Brien's Principle:
Auditors always reject any expense account with a bottom line divisible by 5 or 10.

Round numbers are always fake.

Morton's Law:
If rats are experimented on, they will develop cancer.

Booth's Observation:
The best parachute folders are those who jump themselves.

Sorting out the truth with a lawyer is like sorting balloons with a pitchfork.

An engineer is a man who can do for a dime what any damn fool can do for a dollar.
Nevil Shute

Contraceptives should be used at every conceivable occassion.

A computer user will tell you everything you ask about and nothing more.

Crayne's Law:
All computers wait at the same speed.

Standards aren't standard.
Gerald Weinburg

If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
Norm Schryer

First rule of program optimization;Don't do it!
The second rule of program optimization:
Don't do it yet!
Michael Jackson

God created economists to give credibility to astrologers.

Malpractice makes malperfect.

Meyer's Law:
In all emotional conflicts, the thing you find hardest to do is the thing you should do.
John D. MacDonald

When the tough get going, they let sleeping dogs lie.

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

The early worm catches the fish.

Never trust a prescription that has one pill in it.
C.J. Cherryh

Edelstein's First Law of Benchmarks:
Every commercial product has its best performance on standard benchmarks.
Edelstein's Second Law of Benchmarks:
In any fair benchmark, the DBMS you want to win, will win.
Edelstein's Corollory:
If the system you wanted to win, didn't, the benchmark wasn't fair.

Benchmarking is to computer science as creationism is to evolution.
Herb Edelstein

Timmins' Tautology:
That quantity which, when mathematically manipulated into a set of experimental results, will produce the predicted results, is known
as a constant.

An experiment may be considered successful if no more than half the data must be discarded to obtain agreement with your pet
theory.

Past experience is always true; do not be mislead by present facts.

When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.

The shortest distance between two points is closed for construction.
Nollie Altito

Any theory that fits all of the facts is bound to be wrong since some of the facts are misleading.
Francis Crick

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win,you're still a rat.
Lily Tomlin

People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.
Abigail Van Buren

Ever notice that, when operating blinds, you always pull the wrong string first?
P.R. Engele

Woollcott's Wisdom:
Nothing risque, nothing gained.

Seeger's Law:
Anything in parenthesis can (not) be ignored.

The toughest thing in business is minding your own.

The only time to be positive is when you're positive you are wrong.

Two monologues don't make a dialogue.

Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.
Marston Bates

When it comes to broken marriages most husbands will split the blame -- half his wife's fault and half her mother's.

There will be sex after death; we just won't be able to feel it.
Lily Tomlin

Weston's Wisdom:
A fox is a wolf who sends flowers.

Rule of Failure:
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you have tried.

A business is too big when it takes a week for gossip to go from one end of the office to the other.

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.

The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.

The Word Processor's Rule:
Nothing highlights a document as much as a failure in the spele checker.
Arild Jensen

If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt.
Dean Martin

Swing at the strikes.
Yogi Berra

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
Yogi Berra

Byrne's Law of Concrete Placement:
When you pour, it rains.

Caffyn's Rule on Pronouncements:
The rosier the news, the higher ranking the official who announces it.

Buechner's Principle:
The simplest explanation is that it just doesn't make sense.

Canning's Law:
Nothing is so fallacious as facts -- except figures.

Chilton's Theological-Clerical Rule:
If you work in a church office you have to keep all of your equipment locked up because nothing is sacred.

Civil Service Maxim:
The pension is mightier than the sword.

Clark's Law of Leadership:
A leader should not get too far in front of his troops or he will get shot in the arse.

Conrad's Definition:
A problem drinker is the one who never buys.

Conrad's consolation:
One advantage of getting older is that there are more younger women all the time.

Corcoran's Laws of Nonsense:
1 - There are no laws of nonsense because laws are logical and nonsense is not.
2 - Since the previous law is nonsense, ignore Corcoran's First Law of Nonsense.
3 - If you don't like the first two laws of nonsense, come up with your own.

Craine's Laws of Simplicity:
For every simple solution, there are a number of complex problems.
For every simple problem there are a number of complex problems.

Crisp's Creed:
Don't try to keep up with the Joneses; drag them down to your level.

Cruikshank's Observation:
We have met the enemy, in fact we elected him.

Brown's Insight:
The only game that can't be fixed is peek-a-boo.

Cuppy's Note:
All modern men are descended from wormlike creatures, but it shows more on some people.

Blattenbenberger's Marital Principle:
Marriages are like union contracts in that six weeks after the event, both parties feel that they could have done better if they had held
out longer.

Blick's Rule of Life:
You have two chances -- slim and none.

Bobbitt's Law of TV:
Television network trouble never occurs except during the most exciting part of your favourite program.

Boettcher's Attribution:
If you have a bunch of clowns, you're going to have a circus.

Boorstein's Observation:
Two centuries ago, when a great man appeared, people looked for God's purpose in him; now we look for his press agent.

Boorstlemann's Rule:
If everything seems to be coming your way, you're probably in the wrong lane.

Bradley's Reminder:
Everything comes to him who waits, including death.

Brauer's Warning:
He who tries to pick all the flowers, is sure to get some poison ivy.

Brecht's Hierarchy of Needs:
Grub first -- then ethics.

Bressler's Law:
There is no crisis to which academics will not respond with a seminar.

Brewster's Exception:
Every rule has its exceptions except this one:
a man must be present when he's being shaved.

Brother's Sexist Comment:
The biggest difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.

Buchwald's First Sans Souci Rule:
Any rumour that survives forty eight hours is probably true.
Buchwald's Second Sans Souci Rule:
When a cabinet minister comes to dine, everybody's lunch is tax deductible.

Astor's Economic Insight:
A man who has a million dollars is as well off as if he were rich.

Austin's Law:
It tastes better at someone else's house.

Barber's Rule:
Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.

Schwabb's Truth:
You can get as drunk on water as you can on land.

Baker's Bylaw:
When you are over the hill, you pick up speed.

Ballweg's Discovery:
Whenever there is a flat surface, someone will find something to put on it.

Banacek's Rule:
When an owl shows up at the mouse picnic, he's not there to enter the sack race.

Barne's Law of Probability:
There's a fifty per cent chance of anything. Either it will happen or it won't.

Baron's Law:
The world is divided between victims and predators, and you have to defend yourself against both.

Barrymore's Conclusion:
The thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble is sex.

Beiser's Brass Tack:
Facts without theory are trivia; theory without facts is bullshit.

Big's Oblique Rule:
Don't try to stem the tide; move the beach.

Albert's Law of the Sea:
The more they are in a fog, the more boats (and people) toot their horns.

Ackley's Axiom:
The degree of technical competence is inversely proportional to the level of management.

Agrait's Law:
A rumour will travel fastest to the place where it will do the most damage.

Albinak's Algorithm:
When graphing a function, the width of the line should be inversely proportional to the precision of the data.

Anderson's First Maxim:
Colleges and universities are immune to their own knowledge.

Anderson's Second Maxim:
You can't out-think a person who isn't thinking.

Arnofy's Law of the Post Office:
The likelyhood of a letter getting lost in the mail is directly proportional to its importance.

Daugherty's Dictum:
The computer is most likely to crash during backup.

Hanlon's Assertion:
An unwatched printer always falters.

Bontchev's Laws of Computer viruses:
1 - If the virus can be made, it will be.
2 - If the virus cannot be made, it will be anyway.

Nestor's Nostrum:
Anything worth doing makes a mess

McFee's McFact:
Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. However, it can be lost.

Epps Law of Elevators:
A crowded elevator smells different to short people.

Never assume anything except a 4 percent mortgage.
Dave Kindred

No one is ever old enough to know better.
Holbrook Jackson

Throw strikes. Home plate don't move.
Satchel Paige

Inskip's Rules:
1 - Don't sweat the small stuff.
2 - It's all small stuff.

Saul's Saw:
When fastening down something held by several screws, don't tighten any of them until they are all in place.

Never change diapers in mid-stream.
Don Marquis

No amount of planning can replace dumb luck.
Marc Keralla

Never slap a man who chews tobacco.
Willard Scott

Two plus two equals five -- for large values of two.

Venturi's Law:
There are two great rules in life: never tell everything at once.

Don't eat yellow snow.
W.P. Kinsella

Too much of anything is bad, but too much of good whiskey is barely enough.
Mark Twain

Atkin's Adage:
Miserable penny pinching, never-spend-a-dime people are not much fun to live with, but they make wonderful ancestors.

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Watson's Wisdom:
Show me a man with both feet on the ground and I'll show you a man who can't get his pants on.

A rumour without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
John Tudor

The more experienced the fortune-teller, the more likely they won't predict that their customer is a plain clothes officer.

Knebel's Knews:
Smoking is the leading cause of statistics.

Comroe's Definition:
Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and finding the farmer's daughter.

When things go wrong, don't go with them.

Up is by definition the direction which broadens your horizons.
A. Cygni

Coull's Comment:
Every new project requires a tool that you don't have.
Coull's First Corollory:
The required tool is probably out of stock.
Coull's Second Corollory:
If the required tool is in stock, it is more expensive than any tool in your present kit.

Coggins' Cold Truth:
Conventional wisdom may be conventional but it is not wisdom.

Skelton's First Law:
Advice is correct, if and only if it is not taken.

Finagle's Principle:
The perversity of the universe has no bounds.

Four of every three citizens are against the state.

Grandma Solderquist's Conclusion:
There are more horses' asses in the world than there are horses.

Anderson's Axiom:
Throw it out -- worth a fortune. Keep it -- junk.

Theory is like mist on glasses. Obscures facts.
Charlie Chan

It takes one woman nine months to produce a baby, no matter how many men you put on the job.

There aren't nearly enough crutches in the world for all the lame excuses.

Earthquakes don't kill people, buildings do.
Californa Engineer

A problem is just an opportunity dereferenced with a null pointer.

Capra's Wisdom:
A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.
Robert Benchley

Life is like golf. If you keep in the fairway, you never have to ask for a ruling.
Chi Chi Rodriquez

Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
those who understand what they do not manage,
and those who manage what they do not understand.

Three Laws of Crises:
A person must rock the boat to get ahead.
Technological hierarchies abhor perfection.
The maximum rate of promotion is achieved at a level of crises only slightly less than that which will result in dismissal.

The Law of Failure:
Technology abhors little failures but rewards big ones.

Laws Governing Values:
The value of an idea is measured by its contents rather than by the structure of the hierarchy in which it is pronounced.

The value of a technical article when first published is proportional to the sum of the prestige of its authors, but its ultimate value is
proportional to the sum of the subsequent references to it.

Three Laws of Advice:
The correct advice to give is the advice that is desired. The correct advice is revealed by the structure of the hierarchy, not by the
structure of the technology.
Simple advice is the best advice.
Unsolicited advice is always bad advice.

Five Laws of Decision Making:
Managers make decisions.
Any decision is better than no decision.
A decision is judged by the conviction with which is it uttered.
Technical analysis have no value above the mid-management level.
Decision are justified by benefits to the organization; 
decisions are made by considering benefits to the decision makers.

It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize that you are in a hurry.

There is no theorem saying the interesting things in the world are conserved--only the total of everything.
Richard Feynman

Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean your doctor knows what it is.
Corollory I:
If the name of your condition includes the word "intrinsic", then nobody knows what it is.

All wiring access holes are either too small or in the wrong place.
All wiring trays you need to string new cable in are full.

The person who snores falls asleep first.

The wise are pleased when they discover the truth; fools are pleased when they discover falsehood.

The number of thorys that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite.

The number of loopholes in any legal system is always greater than the number of laws.

You can't outtalk a person who knows what they are talking about.
You can't out bullshit a person who doesn't.

Parker's rule of parliamentary procedure:
A motion to adjourn is always in order.

The most important aspect of this rule is that it is false.
CJCL

The Iron Law of Secretaries:
As soon as you get a fresh cup of coffee, the boss will ask you to do something that will last until the coffee is cold.

Wooden legs are not hereditary; wooden heads are.

There are two kinds of people, the righteous and the unrighteous, and the righteous do the dividing.

On any project, the real expert is the person who predicts the highest cost and length of time for the project.

Never try to outwait a bureaucrat.

To decide not to decide is to decide.
To fail to decide is failure.

            Ginsberg's Theorems:
1.You can't win.
2.You can't break even.
3.You can't even quit the game.

            The Laws Of Computer Programming:
1.Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
2.Any given program costs more and takes longer each time it is run.
3.If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
4.If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
5.Any given program will expand to fill all the available memory.
6.The value of a program is inversely proportional to the weight of its
  output.
7.Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
  programmer who must maintain it.

            Pierce's Law:
     In any computer system, the machine will always misinterpret,
misconstrue, misprint, or not evaluate any math or subroutines or fail
to print any output on at least the first run through.

            Corollary To Pierce's Law:
     When a compiler accepts a program without error on the first run,
the program will not yield the desired output.

            Cheop's Law:
Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

            Gumperson's Law:
     The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its
desirability.

            Gummidge's Law:
     The amount of expertise varies in inverse ratio to the number of
statements understood by the general public.

            Harvard's Law, As Applied To Computers:
     Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity and other variables, the computer will do
as it damn well pleases.

            Pudder's Laws:
1.Anything that begins well ends badly.
2.Anything that begins badly ends worse.

            Westheimer's Rule:
     To estimate the time it takes to do a task: estimate the time you
think it should take, multiply by two and change the unit of measure to
the next higher unit. Thus, we allocate two days for a one hour task.

            Stockmayer's Theorem:
     If it looks easy, it's tough. If it looks tough, it's damn near
impossible.

            Atwood's Corollary:
     No books are lost by lending except those you particularly wanted
to keep.

            Johnson's Third Law:
     If you miss one issue of any magazine, it will be the issue that
has the article, story or installment you were most anxious to read.

            Corollary To Johnson's Third Law:
All of your friends either missed it, lost it or threw it out.

            Harper's Magazine Law:
You will never find the article until you replace it.

            Finagle's Fourth Law:
     Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it will only
make it worse.

            Featherkill's Rule:
Whatever you did, that's what you planned.

            Flap's Law:
     Any inanimate object, regardless of its position, configuration or
purpose, may be expected to perform at any time in a totally un-
expected manner for reasons that are either entirely obscure or else
completely mysterious.

            Jaruk's Second Law:
     If it would be cheaper to buy a new unit, the company will insist
upon repairing the old one.

            Corollary To Jarek's Second Law:
     If it would be cheaper to repair the old one, the company will
insist on the latest model.

            Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
     Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner
of the workshop.

            Corollary
     On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first always
strike your toes.

            Gore's Laws Of Design Engineering:
1.The principle function of the design engineer is to make things
  difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.
2.That component of any circuit which has the shortest service life
  will be placed in the least accessible location.
3.Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete,
  two parts which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still
  under development.

            Corollaries To Design Laws:
1.The project engineer will change the design to suit the state-of-the-
  art.
2.The changes will not be mentioned in the service manual.

     Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable terms,
velocity, for instance, will be in furlongs per fortnight.

            Patrick's Theorem:
If the experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.

            Skinners's Constant:
     That quantity which, when multiplied times, divided by, added to,
or subtracted from your answer ... gives you the answer you should have
gotten.

             Horners's Five Thumb Postulate:
Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.

            Allen's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the directions.

             The Spare Parts Principle:
     The accessibility, during recovery, of small parts which fall from
the work bench, varies directly with the size of the part, and
inversely with its importance to the completion of the work underway.

             The Compensation Corollary:
     The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of
the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence
with theory.

            Gumperson's Law:
     The probability of a given event occurring is inversely
proportional to its desirability.

            The Ordering Principle:
     Those supplies needed for yesterday's experiment must be ordered
no later than tomorrow noon.

            Gray's Law of Programming:
     N+1 trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same time
as N trivial tasks.
     Loggs Rebuttal - N+1 trivial tasks take twice as long as N trivial
tasks for N sufficiently large.

            The Ultimate Principle:
     By definition, when you are investigating the unknown you do not
know what you will find.

            The Futility Factor:
     No experiment is ever a complete failure ... It can always serve
as a bad example.

            Airplane Law:
     When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer
to is on time.

            Allison's Precept:
     The best simple-minded test of expertise in a particular area is
the ability to win money in a series of bets on future occurrences in
that area.

            Anderson's Law:
     Any system or program, however complicated, if looked at in
exactly the right way, will become even more complicated.

            Anthony's Law of Force:
Don't force it, get a larger hammer.

            Army Axiom:
Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.

            Axiom of the Pipe: (Trischmann's Paradox)
     A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to
stick in his mouth.

            Baker's Law:
Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

            Halpern's Observation:
     The tendency to err that programmers have been noticed to share
with other human beings has often been treated as if it were an
awkwardness attendant upon programming's adolescence, which (like acne)
would disappear with the craft's coming of age.  It has proved
otherwise.

            Boren's First Law:
When in doubt, mumble.

            Brook's Law:
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

            Barth's Distinction:
     There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
types, and those who don't.

            Forthoffer's Cynical Summary of Barzun's Laws:
1)  That which has not yet been taught directly can never be taught
    directly.
2)  If at first you don't succeed, you will never succeed.

            Decaprio's Rule:
Everything takes more time and money.

            Gallois's Revelation:
     If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes back out but
tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very
expensive machine, is somehow enobled, and none dares to criticize it.

            Dijkstra's Law of Programming Inertia:
     If you don't know what your program is supposed to do, you'd
better not start writing it.

            Etorre's Observation:
The other line moves faster.

            First Maxim of Computers:
To err is human, but to really screw things up requires a computer.

            Gallois's Corollary:
     An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping
on to the Grand Fallacy.

            Glib's Laws of Reliability:
1.  Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
    Corollary - At the source of every error which is blamed on the
    computer you will find at least two human errors, including the
    error of blaming it on the computer.
2.  Any system which relies on human reliability is unreliable.
3.  The only difference between the fools and the criminal who attacks
    a system is that the fool attacks unpredictably and on a broader
    front.
4.  A system tends to grow in terms of complexity rather than
    simplification, until the resulting unreliability becomes
    intolerable.
5.  Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to
    the inherent unreliability of the system in which they are used.
6.  The error detection and correction capabilities of a system will
    serve as the key to understanding the types of error which they
    cannot handle.
7.  Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to
    detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
8.  All real programs contain errors unless proven otherwise, which is
    impossible.
9.  Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
    probable cost of errors, or until somebody insists on getting some
    useful work done.

            Goodin's Law of Conversions:
     The new hardware will break down as soon as the old is
disconnected and out.

            Gordon's First Law:
     If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth
doing well.

            Golub's Laws of Computerdom:
1.  Fuzzy project objectives are used to avoid the embarrassment of
    estimating the corresponding costs.
2.  A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete
    than expected; if carefully planned, it will take only twice as
    long.
3.  The effort required to correct course increases geometrically with
    time.
4.  Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
    vividly manifests their lack of progress.

            Hoare's Law of Large Programs:
Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.
            Grosch's Law:
     Computer power increases as the square of the costs.  If you want
to do it twice as cheaply, you have to do it four times as fast.

            Howe's Law:
Every man has a scheme that will not work.

            Laws of Computability as Applied to Social Science:
1.  Any system or program, however complicated, if looked at in
    exactly the right way, will become even more complicated.
2.  If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set.

            Law of Selective Gravity:
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
 Jenning's Corollary - The chance of the bread falling with the
 buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the
 carpet.

            Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
There's always one more bug.

            Paperboy's rule of Weather:
     No matter how clear the skies are, a thunderstorm will move in 5
minutes after the papers are delivered.

            Project scheduling "99" rule:
     The first 90 percent of the task takes 10 percent of the time.
The last 10 percent takes the other 90 percent.

            Sattlinger's Law:
It works better if you plug it in.

            Segal's Law:
     A man with one watch knows what time it is.  A man with two
watches is never sure.

            Shaw's Principle:
     Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want
to use it.

            Troutman's Programming Postulates:
1.  If a test installation functions perfectly, all subsequent systems
    will malfunction.
2.  Not until a program has been in production for at least six months
    will the most harmful error be discovered.
3.  Job control cards that positively cannot be arranged in
    improper order will be.
4.  Interchangeable tapes won't.
5.  If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an
    ingenious idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it.
6.  Profanity is the one language all programmers understand.

            The Unspeakable Law:
     As soon as you mention something ... if it's good, it goes away;
if it's bad, it happens.

            Weinberg's Law:
     If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy society as we
know it.

     It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize that you
are in a hurry.

            Cannon's Comment:
     If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat
tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

            Manly's Maxim:
     Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion
with confidence.

            Firestone's Law of Forecasting:
Chicken Little only has to be right once.

            Grizzard's truism:
     The trouble with most jobs is the job holder's resemblance to
being one of a sled dog team. No one gets a change of scenery except
the lead dog.

            Scott's Second Law:
     When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to
have been correct in the first place.

            Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

            Finagle's Second Law:
No matter what the experiment's result, there will always be someone
 eager to:
 (a) misinterpret it.
 (b) fake it.
     or
 (c) believe it supports his own pet theory.

            Finagle's Third Law:
     In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.

            Finagle's Fourth Law:
     Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it
worse.

            Rudin's Law:
     In crises that force people to choose among alternative courses of
action, most people will choose the worst one possible.

            Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.

            Etorre's Observation:
The other line always moves faster.

            O'Brien's Variation:
     If you change lines, the one you just left will start to move
faster than the one you are now in.

            Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving Systems Dynamics:
     Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use
a bigger can.

            Non-Reciprocal Law of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
Positive expectations yield negative results.

            Klipstein's Law:
     Tolerances will accumulate unidirectionally toward maximum
difficulty of assembly.

            Glatum's Law of Materialistic Acquisitiveness:
     The perceived usefulness of an article is inversely proportional
to its actual usefulness once bought and paid for.

            Lewis' Law:
     No matter how long or hard you shop for an item, after you've
bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.

            The Airplane Law:
     When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer
to is on time.

            The Queue Principal:
     The longer you wait in line, the greater the likelihood that you
are in the wrong line.

            Lowery's Law:
If it jams - force it.
If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

            First Law of Revision:
     Information necessitating a change of design will be conveyed to
the designer after - and only after - the plans are complete.
          (Often called the 'Now They Tell Us' Law)

            Corollary I:
     In simple cases, presenting one obvious right way versus one
obvious wrong way, it is often wiser to choose the wrong way so as to
expedite subsequent revision.

            Second Law of Revision:
     The more innocuous the modification appears to be, the further its
influence will extend and the more plans will have to be redrawn.

            Third Law of Revision:
     If, when completion of a design is imminent, field dimensions are
finally supplied as they actually are -- instead of as they were meant
to be -- it is always simpler to start all over.

            Corollary I:
     It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about interferences
--if you have none, someone will make one for you.

            Law of Selective Gravity:
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

            Maier's Law:
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.

            Law of Research:
Enough research will tend to support your theory.

            Wyszkowski's Second Law:
Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.

            Sattinger's Law
It works better if you plug it in.

            Schmidt's Law:
If you mess with a thing long enough, it'll break.

            Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.

            Law of the Perversity of Nature:
     You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
bread to butter.

            Jennings' Corollary to the Law of Selective Gravity:
     The chance of the bread falling with the butter side down is
directly proportional to the value of the carpet.

            Peer's Law:
The solution to the problem changes the problem.

            Carson's Law:
It's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick.

            Mark's mark:
Love is a matter of chemistry;
 sex is a matter of physics.

            Korman's conclusion:
     The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come your
way again.

            Lennon's Law:
Life is what happens while you are making other plans.

            Maugham's Thought:
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

            Krueger's Observation:
     A taxpayer is someone who does not have to take a civil service
exam in order to work for the government.

            Harver's Law:
A drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts.

            Rule of Accuracy:
     When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if
you know the answer.

            Schmidt's Observation:
All things being equal, a fat person uses more soap than a thin person.

            Gibb's Law:
Infinity is one lawyer waiting for another.

            Wyszowski's Law:
No experiment is reproducible.

            Fett's Law:
Never replicate a successful experiment.

            Brooke's Law:
     Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it
beyond recognition.

            Peter's Placebo:
An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

            Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labour:
People are always available for work in the past tense.

            Clarke's Second Law:
     The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond
them into the impossible.

            Witten's Law:
     Whenever you cut your fingernails, you will find a need for them
an hour later.

            Katz's Law:
     Men and women will act rationally when all other possibilities
have been exhausted.

            Cole's Axiom:
     The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
population is growing.

            Hartley's Second Law:
Never go to bed with anybody crazier than you are.

            Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who does not have to do it himself.

            Clarke's Third Law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

            Jones' Motto:
Friends come and go but enemies accumulate.

            The ultimate Law:
All general statements are false.

            Law of Reruns:
     If you have watched a TV series only once, and you watch it again,
it will be a rerun of the same episode.

            The Whispered Rule:
People will believe anything if you whisper it.

            Farnsdick's corollary:
After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself.

            Law of Revelation:
The hidden flaw never remains hidden.

            Grossman's Misquote:
Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers.

            Ducharme's Precept:
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.

            First Postulate of Isomurphism:
Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.

            The Unapplicable Law:
Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work.

            The Unspeakable Law:
As soon as you mention something;
 if it is good, it goes away.
 if it is bad, it happens.

            Perkin's postulate:
The bigger they are, the harder they hit.

            Stewart's Law of Retroaction:
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

            First Law of Laboratory Work:
Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.

            Handy Guide to Modern Science:
1.  If it's green or it wiggles, it's biology.
2.  If it stinks, it's chemistry.
3.  If it doesn't work, it's physics.
4.  If it's incomprehensible, it's mathematics.
5.  If it doesn't make sense, it's either economics or psychology.

            Merkin's Maxim:
When in doubt, predict that the present trend will continue.

            Woltman's Law:
Never program and drink beer at the same time.

            Matz's warning:
Beware of the physician who is great at getting out of trouble.

            Lewis' Law:
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.

            Shirley's Law:
Most people deserve each other.

            Galbraith's Law of Political Wisdom:
Anyone who says he is not going to resign, four times, definitely will.

            Hawkin's Theory of Progress:
     Progress does not consist of replacing a theory that is wrong with
one that is right. It consists of replacing a theory that is wrong with
one that is more subtly wrong.

            Mencken's Metalaw:
     For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it
is always wrong.

            Allen's Distinction:
     The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't
get much sleep.

            Berra's Law:
You can observe a lot just by watching.

            Bicycle Law:
All bicycles weigh 50 pounds:
 A 30 pound bicycle needs a 20 pound lock.
 A 40 pound bicycle needs a 10 pound lock.
 A 50 pound bicycle doesn't need a lock.

            Cohen's Law:
     What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the
facts, not the facts themselves.

            Comin's Law:
     People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them
Benjamin Franklin said it first.

            Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
     If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damned
near zero.

            Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
1. An object in motion will be heading in the wrong direction.
2. An object at rest will be in the wrong place.

            Allen's Law:
Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

            Jones' Principle:
Needs are a function of what other people have.

            Langin's Law:
If things were left to chance, they'd be better.

            Sevareid's Law:
The chief cause of problems is solutions.

            Thoreau's Law:
     If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intention of
doing you good, you should run for your life.

            Lyall's Conjecture:
If a computer cable has one end, then it has another.

            Klipstein's Lament:
All warranty clauses are voided by payment of the invoice.

            Horwood's Fourth Law:
     The respectability of existing data grows with elapsed time and
distance from the data source to the investigator.

            Horwood's Fifth Law:
     Data can be moved from one office to another but it cannot be
created or destroyed.

            de la Lastra's Law:
     After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an
access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has
been removed.

            de la Lastra's Corollary:
     After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws, it
will be discovered that the gasket has been omitted.

            Rosenfield's Regret:
The most delicate component will be dropped.

            Klipstein's Observation:
Any product cut to length will be too short.

            Sueker's Note:
If you need n items of anything, you will have n - 1 in stock.

            Horwood's First Law:
Good data is the data you already have.

            Horwood's Second Law:
Bad data drives out good.

            Horwood's Third Law:
     The data you have for the present crisis was collected to relate
to the previous one.

            Horwood's Sixth Law:
If you have the right data you have the wrong problem; and vice versa.

            Horwood's Seventh Law:
The important thing is not what you do, but how you measure it.

            Kelly-Bootle's Law of Programming:
The sooner you start coding, the longer it is going to take.

            Horwood's Ninth  Law:
Acquisition of knowledge from experience is an exception.

            Horwood's Tenth Law:
Knowledge grows at half the rate at which academic courses proliferate.

            Cheops Law:
No project was ever completed on time and within budget.

            Horwood's Eighth Law:
     In complex systems, there is no relationship between information
gathered and decisions made.

            The Seven Catastrophes of Computing:
     The user, the manufacturer, the model, the salesperson, the
operating system, the language, and the application.

            Olivier's Law
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

            Weiner's Law of Libraries:
There are no answers, only cross-references.

            Searle's Third Law:
You win a few, you loose a lot.

            Berra's Second Law:
Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked.
            Sodd's Second Law:
     Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound
to occur.

            Foster's Law:
     The only people who find what they are looking for in life are the
fault finders.

            Schopenhauer's Law of Entropy:
     If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel of sewage, you get
sewage.  If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel of wine, you get
sewage.

            Munder's Theorem:
For every '10', there are ten '1's.

            Levy's Eighth Law:
No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.

            Strong's Reply:
     Genius cannot be fruitful without due consideration and attention
to detail.

            Weatherwax's Postulate:
     The degree with which you overreact to information will be in
inverse proportion to its accuracy.

            Zappa's Law:
     There are two things which are truly universal:
hydrogen and stupidity.

            Fagin's observation:
Hindsight is an exact science.

            First rule of History:
History doesn't repeat itself; historians merely repeat one another.

            Ehler's First Law:
When you find out how far you can go, you've gone too far.

            Sigstad's Law:
When it gets to be your turn, they change the rules.

            Roger's Law:
     As soon as the stewardess serves coffee, the aircraft encounters
turbulence.

            Davis' Explanation:
Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.

            Bachman's Law:
     The greater the cost of putting a plan into operation, the less
chance of abandoning it.

            Bachman's Corollary:
     The higher the level of prestige accorded the people behind a
plan, the less chance of abandoning it.

            Law of Probable Distribution:
Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
            Cohn's First Law:
     In any bureaucracy, paperwork increases as you spend more and more
time reporting on the less and less you are doing.

            Cohn's Second Law:
     In any bureaucracy, stability is achieved when you spend all of
your time reporting on the nothing you are doing.

            Kushner's Law:
     The chances of anybody doing anything are inversely proportional
to the number of other people who are in a position to do it instead.

            Gourd's Axiom:
     A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours
are lost.

            Steinbach's Advice to Systems Programmers:
Never test for an error you don't know how to handle.

            Rule of Defactualization:
Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.

            Maier's Second Law:
The bigger the theory, the better.

            Barach's Rule:
An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his physician.

            Hofstadter's Law:
     The time and effort required to complete a project are always more
than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

            Matz's Medication Rule:
     A drug is that substance which, when injected into a rat, will
produce a scientific report.

            Hane's Law:
There is no limit to how bad things can get.

            Conner's Second Law:
If something is confidential, it will be left in the copier.

            Edward's Law:
If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

            Tusseman's Law:
Nothing is an inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.

            Block's Bombshell:
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

            Ogden's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.

            Shick's Law:
There is no problem a good miracle can't solve.

            Mayhis Rule:
It is bad luck to be superstitious.

            Fundamental Tenet of Reform:
     Reforms come from below.  No man who has four aces ever calls for
a new deal.

            Maxey's Maxim:
No matter what happens, there is always someone who knew it would.

            Sprinkle's Law:
Things fall at right angles.

            Myer's Second Law:
Experiments must be reproducible -- they should fail the same way.

            Myer's Third Law:
Always verify your witchcraft.

            Myer's Fourth Law:
First draw your curves -- then plot your readings.

            Myer's Sixth Law:
A record of data is useful -- it indicates that you have been working.

            Myer's Eighth Law:
To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.

            Myer's Ninth Law:
In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

            Rothstein's Observation:
     The one part that the fabrication plant forgot to ship you
supports seventy five per cent of the balance of the shipment.

            Rothstein's Corollory:
     Not only did they forget to ship it; fifty per cent of the time
they haven't even made it..

            Rothstein's Note:
     Truck deliveries that normally take one day will take five when
you're waiting for the truck.

            Otto's Observation:
     The color of any paint formula, as shown by the manufacturer's
sample, bears no resemblance to the actual color of that formula when
applied to any surface.

            Rothstein's Advice:
     The eye of the Chief Inspecting Engineer is more accurate than the
finest instrument.

            Law of the Too, Too Solid Point:
     In any collection of data, the figure that is most obviously
correct --beyond any need of checking -- is the mistake.

            Corollary I:
No one whom you ask for help will see it either.


            Corollary II:
Everyone who stops by with unsought advice will see it immediately.

            Blattenbenberger's Marital Principle:
     Marriages are like union contracts in that six weeks after the
event, both parties feel that they could have done better if they had
held out longer.

            Three Laws of Crises
A person must rock the boat to get ahead.
Technological hierarchies abhor perfection.
The maximum rate of promotion is achieved at a level of crises only
 slightly less than that which will result in dismissal.

            The Grocery Bag Law:
    The candy bar you had planned to eat on the way home from the
market is hidden at the bottom of the grocery bag.

            First Law of Business Meetings:
     The probability that the lead pencil will break is directly
proportional to the importance of the notes being taken.

            Brasington's First Law:
You will never use the backup copy you just made.

            Brasington's Second Law:
The only backup copy you will ever need is either:
 - the one you didn't have time to make, or;
 - the one you did make but cannot read.

            Brasington's Third Law:
     There is no danger in x-raying a scratch disk or tape.  However, a
boy scout's magnet can destroy the only copy of a file at 50 yards.

            Brasington's Fourth Law:
     The probability that a given program will conform to expectations
is inversely proportional to the programmer's confidence in his ability
to do the job.

            Brasington's Fifth Law:
When a programmer tells you "no problem", you have a serious problem.

            Brasington's Wisdom:
     When a programmer commits to a completion date, make sure it
includes day, month, and year.

            Brasington's Sixth Law:
     No system is ever completely debugged.  Attempts to debug it
invariably introduce new bugs which are even harder to find.

            Brasington's Seventh Law:
     Projects progress quickly until they become 90% complete, then
they remain 90% complete forever.

            Brasington's Insight:
     One advantage of fuzzy project objectives is that they let you
avoid the embarrassment of estimating the costs.

            Liebling's Truth:
Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.
            Brasington's Eighth Law:
     If project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change
will exceed the rate of progress.

            Brasington's Ninth Law:
     A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete
than expected; a carefully planned one will take only twice as long.

            Timmins' Tautology:
     That quantity which, when mathematically manipulated into a set of
experimental results, will produce the predicted results, is known as a
constant.

            Swanson's Principle of Prelusive Programming:
     Hardware will learn to emulate any software bug within one hour of
its removal.

            Heblock's Horror:
If it's good, they'll stop making it.

            Cayo's Law:
The only things that start on time are those that you're late for.

            The Word Processor's Rule:
     Nothing highlights a document as much as a failure in the spele
checker.

            Walton's Observation:
Given two choices, you'll make the wrong one -- twice.

            Augustine's Fundamental Law of Aeronautics:
Never fly on an airplane with a tail number less than 10.

            Boyle's First Law:
     The success of any venture will be helped by prayer, even in the
wrong denomination.

            Boyle's Second Law:
     An original idea will never emerge from a committee in the
original form.

            Boyle's Third Law:
     If not controlled, work will flow to the competent employee until
he or she is submerged.

            Conrad's consolation:
     One advantage of getting older is that there are more younger
women all the time.

            Otto's Corollary:
     No two samples of any paint formula, when prepared at two
different times, look anything like each other.

            Dieter's Law:
Food that tastes best has the highest number of calories.

            Craine's Laws of Simplicity:
For every simple solution, there are a number of complex problems.
For every simple problem there are a number of complex problems.

            Morton's Law:
If rats are experimented on, they will develop cancer.

            Booth's Observation:
The best parachute folders are those who jump themselves.

            Byrne's Law of Concrete Placement:
When you pour, it rains.

            Caffyn's Rule on Pronouncements:
The rosier the news, the higher ranking the official who announces it.

            Buechner's Principle:
The simplest explanation is that it just doesn't make sense.

            Canning's Law:
Nothing is so fallacious as facts -- except figures.

            Corcoran's Laws of Nonsense:
1 - There are no laws of nonsense because laws are logical and nonsense
    is not.
2 - Since the previous law is nonsense, ignore Corcoran's First Law of
    Nonsense.
3 - If you don't like the first two laws of nonsense, come up with your
    own.

            Brown's Insight:
The only game that can't be fixed is peek-a-boo.

            Blick's Rule of Life:
You have two chances -- slim and none.

            Cuppy's Note:
     All modern men are descended from wormlike creatures, but it shows
more on some people.

            Gary's Rule:
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

            Bobbitt's Law of TV:
     Television network trouble never occurs except during the most
exciting part of your favorite program.

            Boettcher's Attribution:
If you have a bunch of clowns, you're going to have a circus.

            Boorstein's Observation:
     Two centuries ago, when a great man appeared, people looked for
God's purpose in him; now we look for his press agent.

            Boorstlemann's Rule:
     If everything seems to be coming your way, you're probably in the
wrong lane.

            Bradley's Reminder:
Everything comes to him who waits, including death.
            Brauer's Warning:
He who tries to pick all the flowers, is sure to get some poison ivy.

            Buchwald's Second Sans Souci Rule:
     When a cabinet minister comes to dine, everybody's lunch is tax
deductible.

            Bressler's Law:
There is no crisis to which academics will not respond with a seminar.

            Brewster's Exception:
     Every rule has its exceptions except this one: a man must be
present when he's being shaved.

            Buchwald's First Sans Souci Rule:
Any rumor that survives forty eight hours is probably true.

            Astor's Economic Insight:
A man who has a million dollars is as well off as if he were rich.

            Austin's Law:
It tastes better at someone else's house.

            Barber's Rule:
Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.

            Schwabb's Truth:
You can get as drunk on water as you can on land.

            Ballweg's Discovery:
     Whenever there is a flat surface, someone will find something to
put on it.

            Barne's Law of Probability:
    There's a fifty per cent chance of anything.  Either it will happen
or it won't.

            Agrait's Law:
     A rumor will travel fastest to the place where it will do the most
damage.

            Albinak's Algorithm:
     When graphing a function, the width of the line should be
inversely proportional to the precision of the data.

            Arnofy's Law of the Post Office:
The likelihood of a letter getting lost in the mail is directly
 proportional to its importance.

            Baker's Bylaw:
When you are over the hill, you pick up speed.

            Anderson's Second Maxim:
You can't out-think a person who isn't thinking.

            Daugherty's Dictum:
The computer is most likely to crash during backup.

            Hanlon's Assertion:
An unwatched printer always falters.
            Bontchev's Laws of Computer viruses:
1 - If the virus can be made, it will be.
2 - If the virus cannot be made, it will be anyway.

            Nestor's Nostrum:
Anything worth doing makes a mess.

            Government Rule:
     It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of
vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion.

            Saul's Saw:
     When fastening down something held by several screws, don't
tighten any of them until they are all in place.

            Atkin's Adage:
     Miserable penny pinching, never-spend-a-dime people are not much
fun to live with, but they make wonderful ancestors.

            Watson's Wisdom:
     Show me a man with both feet on the ground and I'll show you a man
who can't get his pants on.

            Comroe's Definition:
     Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and finding the
farmer's daughter.

            McFee's McFact:
Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.  However, it can be lost.

            Medical Truism:
     Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't
mean your doctor knows what it is.

            Corollory I:
     If the name of your condition includes the word "intrinsic", then
nobody knows what it is.

            Coull's Comment:
Every new project requires a tool that you don't have.

            Coull's First Corollory:
The required tool is probably out of stock.

            Coull's Second Corollory:
     If the required tool is in stock, it is more expensive than any
tool in your present kit.

            Skelton's First Law:
Advice is correct, if and only if it is not taken.

            Finagle's Principle:
The perversity of the universe has no bounds.

            Grandma Solderquist's Conclusion:
There are more horses' asses in the world than there are horses.

            Capra's Wisdom:
A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

            Putt's Law
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
 those who understand what they do not manage,
 and those who manage what they do not understand.

            Vile's Law
No one is watching until you make a mistake.

            Voltaire's Laws
There is nothing more respectable than an ancient evil.

            Weiner's Law
There are no answers -- only cross-references.

            Wilde's Comment
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

            William and Holland's Law
     If enough data is collected, anything can be proved by statistical
methods.

            Willoughby's Law
When you try to prove that a machine won't work, it will.

            Wolter's Law
     If you have the time, you won't have the money.  If you have the
money, you won't have the time.

            Woodington's Law of Gifts
     The toy with the most potential for driving you crazy will become
your child's favorite.

            Young's Law
All great discoveries are made by mistake.

            Susan's Law of Consumerism
     If you want it and can afford it, but leave to think about it, it
won't be there when you go back for it.

            T. Smith's Rule of Holiday Shopping
There is always one more gift to buy.

            Thal's Law
For every vision there is an equal and opposite revision.

            The Reja-Jansen Law
On the first pull of the cord, the drapes move the wrong way.

            Aigner's Axiom
No matter how well you perform your job, a superior will seek to modify
the results.

            Akvol's Second Law of the Corporation
Any action for which there is no logical explanation will be deemed
"company policy"

            Amand's Law of Management
Everyone you need is always someplace else.

            Army Axiom
Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.

            Beach's Law
No two identical parts are alike.

            Brien's First Law
At some time in the life of any organization, its ability to succeed in
spite of itself runs out.

            Brintnall's Second Law
If you are given two contradictory orders, obey them both.

            Bron's Rule of Leadership
The way to succeed in politics is to find a crowd going somewhere and
get in front of it.

            Cripps' Law of Travel
One child, of any given number of children, will want to go to the
bathroom exactly half way between rest areas.

            Day's minimalist theory of Politics
No politician ever lost an election over a speech that wasn't made.

            Diner's Dilemma
A clean tie attracts the soup of the day.

            Dooley's Law
Trust everybody, but cut the cards.

            Drew's Law of Highway Biology
The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front of your
eyes.

            Kagel's Conclusion
Anything adjustable sooner or later needs adjusting.

            Kaiser's Comment
Never open a can of worms unless you plan to go fishing.

            Katz' Law
Men and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have
been exhausted.

            Kaufman's First Law of Airports
The distance to the gate is inversely proportional to the time
available to catch your flight.

            Knagg's Law
The more grandiose the plan, the greater the chance of failure.

            Kyle's Rule of Advertising
The more useless the product, the bigger the campaign hyping it.

            Ferguson's Precept
A crisis is when you can't say: "Let's forget the whole thing."

            Fourth Law of the Household
The more powerful the vacuum cleaner, the less likely it will pick up a
tiny piece of fuzz on the rug.

            Rap's Law of Inanimate Reproduction
If you take something apart and put it back together enough times,
eventually you will have two of them.

            Phillips' Law
Four-wheel-drive just means getting stuck in more inaccessible places.

            Cutler Webster's Law
There are two sides to every argument unless a man is personally
involved, in which case there is only one.

            Czecinski's Conclusion
There is only one thing worse than dreaming you are at a conference and
aking to find that you are at a conference, and that is the conference
where you can't fall asleep.

             Darrow's Observation
History repeats itself.  That's one of the things wrong with history.

            Dieter's Law
Food that tastes the best has the highest number of calories.

            Dijkstra's Prescription for Programming Inertia
If you don't know what your program is supposed to do, you'd better not
start writing it.

            Dennis's Principles of Management by Crisis
1) To get action out of management, it is necessary to create the
   illusion of a crisis in the hope it will be acted upon.
2) Management will select actions or events and convert them to crises.
   It will then over-react.
3) Management is incapable of recognizing a true crisis.
4) The squeaky hinge gets the oil.

            Dhawan's Laws for the Non-Smoker
1) The cigarette smoke always drifts in the direction of the non-smoker
   regardless of the direction of the breeze.
2) The amount of pleasure derived from a cigarette is directly
   proportional to the number of non-smokers in the vicinity.
3) A smoker is always attracted to the non-smoking section.
4) The life of a cigarette is directly proportional to the intensity of
   the protests from non-smokers.

            Durrell's Parameter
The faster the plane, the narrower the seats.

            Dyer's Law
A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.

            Economists' Laws
1) What men learn from history is that men do not learn from history.
2) If on an actuarial basis there is a 50-50 chance that something will
   go wrong, it will actually go wrong nine times out of ten.

            Rule of Feline Frustration
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly content
and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.

            Finagle's Laws of Information
1) The information you have is not what you want.
2) The information you want is not what you need.
3) The information you need is not what you can obtain.
4) The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay.

            Jaroslovsky's Law
The distance you have to park from your apartment increases in
proportion to the weight of packages you are carrying.

            Jay's Laws of Leadership
1) Changing things is central to leadership, and changing them before
   anyone else is creativity.

            Johnson's Second Law
If, in the course of several months, only three worthwhile social
events take place, they will all fall on the same evening.

            Jones's Law
The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he
can blame it on.

            Laws of the Frisbee
1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to
   land under a car, just beyond reach.  (The technical term for this
   force is "car suck".)
2) The higher the quality of a catch or the comment it receives, the
   greater the probability of a crummy return throw.  ("Good catch. .
   .  Bad throw.")
3) One must never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
   than, "Watch this!"  (Keep 'em guessing.)
4) The higher the costs of hitting any object, the greater the
   certainty it will be struck.  (Remember: The disk is positive; cops
   and old ladies are clearly negative.)
5) The best catches are never seen.  ("Did you see that?"  "See what?")
6) The greatest single aid to distance is for the disc to be going in a
   direction you did not want.  (Wrong way = long way.)
7) The most powerful hex words in the sport are: "I really have this
   down -- watch."  (Know it?  Blow it!)
8) In any crowd of spectators at least one will suggest that razor
   blades could be attached to the disc.  ("You could maim and kill
   with that thing.")
9) The greater your need to make a good catch, the greater the
   probability your partner will deliver his worst throw.  (If you
   can't touch it, you can't trick it.)
10) The single most difficult move with a disc is to put it down.
   ("Just one more!")

All wiring access holes are either too small or in the wrong place.

The person who snores falls asleep first.

     The wise are pleased when they discover the truth; fools are
pleased when they discover falsehood.
     There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may
be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it
is erroneous.

Octal is just like base 10, really, if you're missing two fingers.

     Finance is the study of money and how it violates the rules of
mathematics and common sense.

Reciprocity works both ways.

     Computer programs are ninety percent debugged, fifty per cent of
the time.

     Any given container designed to hold water, will leak, and any
given orifice designed to drain water, will plug up.

Originality is the art of concealing your source.

     If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they
wouldn't reach a conclusion.

     If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every
problem as a nail.

Counting in OCTAL is just like counting in DECIMAL if you don't use
  your thumbs.
Counting in BINARY is just like counting in DECIMAL if you are all
  thumbs.

Any wire cut to specified length will be too short.

No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.

     In new equipment, a failure will not occur until the unit has
passed final inspection.

     Documentation is the castor oil of programming ... Managers know
it must be good because the programmers hate it so much.

     A purchased component or instrument will meet specifications long
enough and only long enough to pass incoming inspection.

Always remove the last screw first to save time.

     After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be
found on the bench.

     Installation and operation instructions shipped with the equipment
will be promptly discarded by the receiving department.

     Manufacturers specifications of performance shall be multiplied by
a factor of .5.
     Every good idea has disadvantages equal to or greater than its
advantages.

     Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
'user friendly' ... their best approach, so far, has been to take all
the old brochures and stamp the words 'user friendly' on the cover.

Organizations are like wine; the bottleneck is always at the top.

     It is only when you need to knock on wood that you realize that
the world is entirely made up of aluminum and plastic.

Hell is the place where everything tests perfectly and nothing works.

     Ignorance and stupidity are not the same thing. At the battle at
Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse was an ignorant savage and George Custer
was an educated military tactician and strategist.  Custer was also
stupid; Crazy Horse wasn't.

     The more obvious the defect in a plan, the more likely it will be
approved.

     The more sensible and simple your plan, the more likely your
supervisor will change it.

     An experiment may be considered successful if no more than half
the data must be discarded to obtain agreement with your pet theory.

     The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're
still a rat.

     Ever notice that, when operating blinds, you always pull the wrong
string first?


A committee is a group of six people doing the work of one.

How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you are
on.

If it's lush, green and thriving in the garden ... it's a weed.

If wires can be connected in two different ways, the first blows the
fuse.

Forthoffer's Cynical Summary of Barzun's Laws:
 1) That which has not yet been taught directly can never be taught
    directly.
 2) If at first you don't succeed, you will never succeed.

Always leave a way out.


Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives
Anything that can go wrong, will.

Hanlon's Razor
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Sturgeon's Law
Ninety percent of everything is crap.

Schopenhaur's Law of Entropy
If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, you get sewage.

The Siddhartha Principle
You cannot cross a river in two strides.

Spencer's Laws of Data
Anyone can make a decision given enough facts.

A good manager can make a decision without enough facts.

A perfect manager can operate in perfect ignorance.

Weber's Definition
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.

Lefty Gomez's Law
If you don't throw it, they can't hit it.

Meadow's Maxim
You can't push on a rope.

Patry's Law
If you know something can go wrong, and take due precautions against it, something else will go wrong.

Richard's Complementary Rules of Ownership
If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.
If you throw anything away, you will need it as soon as it is no longer accessible.

Erbenich's Extension: If you keep it and you need it, you won't be able to find it.

Rogers' Law
If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

Howe's Law
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
Munder's Corollary: Everyone who does not work has a scheme that does. 

The 90/90 Rule of Project Schedules
The first 90 percent of the task takes 10 percent of the time. The last 10 percent of the task takes 90 percent of the time.

O'Brien's Law
Nothing is ever done for the right reasons.

Levy's Ninth Law
Only God can make an random selection.

Hardin's Law
You can never do just one thing.

Roberts' Axiom
Only errors exist.

Lerman's Law of Technology
Any technical problem can be overcome given enough time and money.

Lerman's Corollary: You are never given enough time or money.

Finagle's Eighth Rule
Teamwork is essential. It allows you to blame someone else.

First Rule of Acting
Whatever happens, look as if you intended it to happen.

Jilly and Rob's Conclusion
Life is too serious to be taken very seriously.

Law of the Individual
Nobody really cares or understands what anyone else is doing.

Beach's Law
No two identical parts are alike.

Hane's Law
There is no limit to how bad things can get.

Jay's First Law of Leadership
Changing things is central to leadership, and changing them before anyone else does is creative 
leadership.

Paul's Law
You can't fall off the floor.

Evans' Law
If you can keep your head when everyone about you is losing his, then you just don't understand the problem.

Thine's Law
Nature abhors people.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Levy's Seven Laws of the Disillusionment of the True Liberal  —Marion J. Levy, Jr.
1. Large numbers of things are determined, and therefore not subject to change.
2. Anticipated events never live up to expectations.
3. That segment of the community with which one has the greatest sympathy as a liberal inevitably turns out to be one of the most narrow minded and bigoted segments of the community. 
   (M. S. Kelly, Jr.'s reformulation: Last guys don't finish nice.)
4. Always pray that your opposition be wicked. In wickedness there is a strong strain toward rationality. Therefore, there is always the possibility, in theory, of handling the wicked by outthinking them. Corollary one: good intentions randomize behavior.
5. In unanimity, there is cowardice and uncritical thinking.
6. To have a sense of humor is to be a tragic figure.
7. To know thyself is the ultimate form of aggression.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aigner's Axiom: 
   No matter how well you perform your job, a superior will seek to modify the results. 

The Airplane Law: 
   When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer to is on time. 

Baruch's Observation: 
   If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. 

Bedfellow's Rule: 
   The one who snores will always fall asleep first. 

Berra's Second Law: 
   Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked. 

Blair's Observation: 
   The best laid plans of mice and men are usually about equal. 

Bucy's Law: 
   Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man. 

The Bureaucracy Principle: 
   Only a bureaucracy can fight a bureaucracy. 

Dedera's Law of Probabilities: 
   In a three-story building served by one elevator, nine times out of ten the elevator car will be on a floor where you are not. 

Etorre's Observation: 
   The other line always moves faster. 

First Law of Aviation: 
   Takeoff is optional, landing is compulsory. 

First Law of Debate: 
   Never argue with a fool -- people might not know the difference. 

First Law of Socio-Genetics: 
   Celibacy is not hereditary. 

First Law of Travel: 
   It always takes longer to get there than to get back. 

Glasner's Law: 
   If it says "one size fits all," it doesn't fit anymore. 

Goldenstern's Rules: 
   1. Always hire a rich attorney. 
   2. Never buy from a rich salesman. 

Gourd's Axiom: 
   A meeting is a event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost. 

Gualtieri's law of Inerita: 
   Where there's a will, there's a won't. 

Harris Lamnet: 
   All the good ones are taken. 

Helga's Rule: 
   Say no, then negotiate. 

Heller's Law: 
   The first myth of management is that it exists. 

Hershiser's Second Rule: 
   The label "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" means the price went up. 

Oliver Herford's Rule of Publishing 
    A manuscript is something submitted in haste and returned at leisure. 

Hockett's Fundamental Principle of Mathmaticizing: 
   If you know exactly how to, you don't have to! 

Howden's Law: 
   You remember to mail a letter only when you're nowhere near a mailbox. 

Howe's Law: 
   Everyone has a scheme that will not work. 

Munder's Corollary to Howe's Law: 
   Everyone who does not work has a scheme that does. 

Imbesi's Law of the Conservation of Filth: 
   In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty. 

Freeman's Extension: 
   … but you can get everything dirty without getting anything clean. 

First Law of Infant Gravity: 
   You can't fall off the floor. 
Second Law of Infant Gravity: 
   It takes an infant 6 months to learn this. 

Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government: 
   No mans life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. 

Las Vegas Law: 
   Never be on a loser because you think his luck is bound to change. 

Law of Probable Dispersal: 
   Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed. 

Lieberman's Law: 
   Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens. 

Lynch's Law: 
   When the going gets tough, everyone leaves. 

Meadow's Maxim: 
   You can't push on a rope. 

Meyer's Law: 
   In a social situation, that which is most difficult to do is usually the right thing to do. 

Mitchell's law of Committees: 
   A simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are hold to discuss it. 

Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis: 
   If any idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented, it wasn't worth doing. 

Mr. Cole's Axiom: 
   The sum of the intelligence on the planet is constant; the population is growing. 

Ninety Rules of Project Schedules: 
   The first ninety percent of the take takes ten percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent. 

Olivier's Law: 
   Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. 

Pfeifer's Principle: 
   Never make a decision you can get someone else to make. 

Pudder's Law: 
   Anything that begins well, ends badly. Anything that begins badly ends worse. 

The Queue Principle: 
   The longer you wait in line, the greater the likelihood that you are standing in the wrong line. 

Ringwald's Law of Household Geometry: 
   Any horizontal surface is soon piled up. 

The Roman Rule: 
   The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing. 

Rule of the Great: 
   When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep thoughts, they are probably thinking about lunch. 

Schopenhauer's Law of Entropy: 
   If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, you get sewage. 

Shapiro's Explanation: 
   The grass is always greener on the other side - but that's because they use more manure. 

Simon's Law of Destiny: 
   Glory may be fleeting, but obscurity if forever. 

Skoff's Law: 
   A child will not spill on a dirty floor. 

Smith's Law: 
   No real problem has a solution. 

Sociology's Iron Law of Oligarchy: 
   In every organized activity, no matter the sphere, a small number will become the oligarchical leaders and the others will follow. 

Stewart's Law of Retroaction: 
   It is easier to get forgiveness than permission. 

Suslick's First Law of Maps: 
   All countries are the same size—one map page. 
(Many Europeans do not realize the sense of scale of the U.S. For example, a visiting French postdoc a few years ago was bitterly disappointed to discover that he couldn't just drive from Illinois over to Colorado to go skiing for the weekend.) 

Suslick's Law of Threes: 
   It always takes three times to do anything right. 
   The first time you either overshoot or undershoot; 
   the second time you either over-compensate or under-compensate; 
   it's not until the third time that you have a chance to get it right. 

Suslick's Scheme of Priorities: 
   If it isn't worth doing, 
   it isn't worth doing right. 

Swipple's Rule of Order: 
   He who shouts loudest has the floor. 

Thal's Law: 
   For every vision, there is an equal and opposite revision. 

Trischmann's Paradox: 
   A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth. 

Vile's Law of Value: 
   The more an item costs, the farther you have to send it for repairs. 

Westheimer's Rule: 
   To estimate the time it takes to do a task: estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by 2, and change the unit of measure to the next highest unit. Thus we allocate 2 days for a one-hour task. 

Wethern's Law of Suspended Judgment: 
   Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups. 

Joe's Law
The inside contact that you have developed at great expense is the first person to be let go in any organization.

De Jesus' Observation
An expert is that person most surprised by the latest eveidence to the contrary.

Devries' Dilemma
If you hit two keys on a typewriter, the one you don't want hits the paper.

Cornuelle's Law
Authority tends to assign jobs to those least able to do them.

Deal's First Law of Sailing
The amount of wind will vary inversely with the number and experience of the people you take on board.

Deal's Second Law of Sailing
No matter how strong the breeze when you leave the dock, once you have reached the farthest point from port the wind will die.


Cambell's First Law of Automative Repair
If you can get to the faulty part, you don't have the tool to get it off.

Cambell's Second Law of Automotive Repair
If you can get the part off, the parts house will have it back-ordered.

Yeager's Law
Washing machines only break down during the wash cycle.
Corollary: All breakdowns occur on the plumber's day off.

Kitman's Law
Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.

Mars Rule
An expert is anyone from out of town.

Johnson's Third Law
If, in the course of several months, only three worthwhile social events take place, they will all fall on the same evening.

Jana's Definition
If you want it but you don't, and you can't understand it but you do, it must be love.

J. S. Gillete's Dictum
The only labor worth laboring at is a labor of love.

First Principle for Patients
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he knows what it is.

First Law of Office Murphology
Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.

Snider's Law
Nothing can be done in one trip.

Lunsford's Rule of Scientific Endeavor
The simple explanation always follows the complex solution.

Schrimpton's Law of Teenage Opportunity
When opportunity knocks, you've got headphones on.

Oliver's Law of Location
No matter where you go, there you are!

Bitton's Postulate on State-of-the-Art Electronics
If you understand it, it's obsolete.

Winfield's Dictum of Direction Giving
The possibility of getting lost is directly proportional to the number of times the direction-giver says, "you can't miss it."

Green's Law of Debate
Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.

Second Law for Free-lance Artists
All rush jobs are due the same day.

Third Law for Free-lance Artists
The rush job you spent all night on won't be needed for at least two days.

Law of Legislative Action
The length of time it takes a bill to pass through the legistlature is in inverse proportion to the number of lobbying groups favoring it.

Churchill's Commentary on Man.
Man will occassionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on (MBG as if nothing had happened?)

Law of Balance
Bad habits will cancel out good ones.  Example: The orange juice and gronola you had for breakfast will be canceled out by the cigarette you smoked on the way to work and the candy bar you just bought.

Jeff's Theory of the Stock Market
The price of a stock moves inversely to the number of shares purchased.

Duggan's Law of Scholarly Research
The most valuable quotation will be the one for which you cannot determine the source.

Rominger's Rules for Students
1. The more general the title of the course, the less you will learn from it.
2. The more specific a title is, the less you will be able to apply it later.

Conway's Law
In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on.  That person must be fired.

Jones' First Law of TV Programming
The only new show worth watching will be cancelled.

Jones' Second Law of TV Programmming
If there are only two shows worth watching, they will be on at the same time.

Humphries' Law of Bicycling
The shortest route has the steepest hills.

First Law of Class Scheduling
Class schedules are designed so that every student will waste the maximum time between classes.

The Pitfalls of Genius
No boss will keep an employee who is right all the time.

First Law of Applies Terror
When reviewing your notes before an exam, the most important ones will be illegible.

Law of the Lost Inch
In designing any type of construction, no overall dimension can be totalled correctly after 4:40 P.M. on Friday.
Corollary: THe correct total will become self-evident at 9:01 A.M. on Monday.

Fulton's Law of Gravity
The effort to catch a falling object will produce more destruction than if the object had been allowed to fall in the first place.

First Law of Kitchen Confusion
In a family recipe you discover in an old book, the most vital measurement will be illegible.

Reynold's Law
Wind velocity increases in direct proportion to the cost of the harido.

Heid's Law of Lines
No matter how early your arrive, someone else is in line first.

Heid's Observation
Junk mail never quits.

Owen's Theory of Organizational Deviance
Every organization has an alloted number of postions to be filled by misfits.
Corollary: Once a misfit leaves, another will be recruited.

The Pet Principle
No matter which side of the door the dog or cat is on, it's the wrong side.

Witzling's Law of Progeny Performance
Any child who chatters non-stop at home will refuse to utter a word when asked to speak to a vistor.

Second Law of Gardening
Fancy gizmos don't work.

Truman's Law
If you cannot convince them, confuse them

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.

Moser's Law of Spectator Sports
Exciting plays occur only while you are watching the scoreboard or out buying a hot dog.

Lavia's Law of Tennis
A mediocre player will sink to the level of his or her opposition.

The Rule of the Rally
The only way to make for being lost is to make record time while you are lost.

Quile's Consultation Law
The job that pays the most will be offered when there is no time to deliver the services.

First Rule of Negative Anticipation
You will save yourself a lot of needless worry if you don't burn your bridges until you come to them.

Nelson's Law
The better the four-wheel drive, the farther out you get stuck.

Karinthy's Definition
A bus is a vehicle that goes on the other side in the opposite direction.

Andras' Political Postulate
The founding of a party signals the dissolution of the movement.

Bromberg's First Law of Automotive Repair
When the need arises, any tool or object closest to you becomes a hammer.

Stitzer's Vacation Principle
When packing for a vacation, take half as much clothing and twice as much money.

Norris' Law
The day of the big heat wave is the day the office air conditioning breaks down.
Knox's Principle of Star Quality
Whenever a superstat is traded to your favorite team, he fades.  Whenever your team trades away a useless no-name, he immediately rises to stardom.

Rudnicki's Rule
That which cannot be taken apart will fall apart.

Lemar's Parking Postulate
After you have parked six blocks away, you will find two new parking spaces right in front of the building entrance.

Hansen's Library Axiom
The closest library doesn't have the material you need.

Pantuso's First Law
The book you spent $19.95 for today will come out in paperback tomorrow.

Porkingham's Law of Sportfishing
The worse your line is tangles, the better the fishing is around you.

Dingle's Law
When somebody drops something, everybody will kick it around rather than pick it up.

Lampner's Law of Employment
When leaving work late, you will go unnoticed.  When leaving work early, you will meet your boss in the parking lot.

Lorenz's Law of Mechanical Repair
After your hands become coated with greese, your nose will begin to itch.

Law of the Great Idea
The only time you come up with a great Solution is after somebody else has solved the problem.

The Salary Axiom
The pay raise is just large enough to increase your taxes and just small enough to have no effect on your take-home pay.

Howden's Law
You remember to mail a letter only when you're nowhere near a mailbox.

Evans' Law
If you can keep your head when everyone about you is losing his, then you just don't understand the problem.

Matz's Warning
Beware of the physician who is great at getting out of trouble.

Law of Arrival
Those who live closest arrive latest.

Baker's Law of Economics
You never want the one you can afford.

Telesco's First Law of Nursing
All the 1Vs are at the other end of the hall.

Lewis' Law
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.

McGowan's Christmas
Shopping Axiom
If an item is advertised as "under $50, " you can bet it's not $19.95.

Second Law of Business Meetings
If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you will pick the wrong one. COROLLARY: If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it wrong anyway.

Rap's Law of Inanimate
Reproduction
If you take something apart and put it back together enough times, eventually you will have two of them.

Brooks' Laws of Retailing
1. Security isn't.
2. Management can't.
3. Sale promotions don't.
4. Consumer assistance doesn't.
5. Workers won't.

Jilly's Law of the Post Office
A Guaranteed Delivery Date is a guarantee that your delivery will take place on a day with a date.

Finman's Bargain
Basement Principle
The one you want is never the one on sale.

Jana's Law of the Season
The one friend or relative for whom you didn't buy a gift will arrive with a gift for you.

Norma's Definition
An "After Christmas Sale" is an opportunity to buy all the junk you wouldn't be caught dead buying for Christmas.

Chisholm's Second Corollary
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.

Cooper's Metalaw
A proliferation of new laws creates a proliferation of new Loopholes.

Maahs' Law
Things go right so they can go wrong.

Miller's Law of Insurance
Insurance covers everything except what happens.

Kelly's First Law of Aerial Navigation
The most important information on any chart is on the fold, which is torn.

Amerikaner's Law of Light
There are two types of Hanukkah candles:
1. Broken.
2. Unlightable.

Sintetos' First Law of Consumerism
A sixty-day warranty guarantees that the product will self-destruct on the sixty-first day.

Thine's Law
Nature abhors people.

First Rule of Intelligent Tinkering
Save all the parts.

Dehay's Axiom 
Simple jobs always get put off because there will be time to do them later.

	Hane's Law
There is no limit to how bad things can get.

Firmage's Law of Child Care
Rather than bribing, teasing, forcing or hoodwinking your baby to take a pill, place it on the floor. It will be eaten.

Marko's Enigma
Paint applied according to the manufacturer's instructions lasts three months. A drop on your shoe lasts forever.

Whistler's Law
You never know who's right, but you always know who's in charge.

	Imhoff s Law 
The organization of any bureaucracy is very much like a septic tank-the really big chunks always rise to the top.

First Law of Living
As soon as you're doing what you wanted to be doing, you want to be doing something else.

Hadley's First Law of Clothes Shopping 
If you like it, they don't have it in your size.

T. Smith's Rule of Holiday Shopping
There is always one more gift to buy.

Trischmann's Paradox
A pipe gives a wise man time to think and fool something to stick in his mouth.

Bucy's Law
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Dedera's Law
In a three-story building served by on elevator, nine times out of ten the elevator will be on a floor where you are not.

	Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government 
No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

Jay's First Law of Leadership
Changing things is central to leadership, and changing them before anyone else does creative leadership.

Zelman's Rule of Radio Reception
Your pocket radio won't pick up the station you want to hear most.

London's Law of Libraries
No matter which book you need, it's on the bottom shelf.

Robertson's Law
Quality assurance doesn't.

Arthur's First Law
People to whom you are attracted think you remind them of someone else.

Kovac's Conundrum
When you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal.

Seeger's Law
Anything in parentheses can be ignored.

First Rule of Acting
Whatever happens, look as if you intended it to happen.

Ballance's Law of Relativity
How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.

Jacob's Law
To err is human-to blame it on someone else is even more human.

Felson's Law
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

Python's Principle of TV Morality
There is nothing wrong with sex on television, just as long as you don't fall off it.

Britt's Green Thumb Postulate
The life expectancy of a houseplant varies inversely with its price and directly with its ugliness.

Arthur's Second Law of Love
The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be delayed long enough for you to make afoot of yourself in person.

Troutman's Sixth Programming Postulate
Profanity is the one language all programmers cnow.

Pfeifer's Principle
Never make a decision you can get someone else to make.

Drew's Law of Professional Practice
The client who pays the least, complains the most.

Law of Probable Dispersal
Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.

Strano's Law
When all else fails, try the boss's suggestion.

Brintnall's Second Law
If you are given two contradictory orders, obey them both.

Bogovich's Law
He who hesitates is probably right.

Paulg's Law
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save.

Tillis' Organizational Principle
If you file it, you'll know where it is but never need it. If you don't file it, you'll need it but never know where it is.

Johnson's Law
The number of minor illnesses among the employees is inversely proportional to the health of the organization.

Shapiro's Law of Reward
The one who does the least work will get the most redit.

Sevareid's Law
The chief cause of problems is solutions.

Holten's Homily
The only time to be positive is when you are positive you are wrong.

Beiser's First Computer Axiom
When putting it into memory, remember where you put it.

Lee's Law 
In any dealings with a collective body of people, the
people will always be more tacky than originally
expected.

J.S. Gillette's Commentary on Decisions
I always know what I want ...I just keep changing my mind.

Roberts' Axiom
	Only errors exist.

BERMAN'S COROLLARY TO ROBERTS' AXIOM
One person's error is another person's data.

Eng's Principle
The easier it is to do, the harder it is to change.

Principle of Design Inertia
Any change looks terrible at first.

Mayne's Law
Nobody notices the big errors.

Grossman's Lemma
any task worth doing was worth doing yesterday.

Hecht's Fourth Law

There's no time like the present for postponing what you don't want to do.

Second Principle for Patients
The more boring and out-of-date the magazines in the waiting room, the longer you will have to wait for your scheduled appointment.

Working Cook's Laws
1. If you're wondering if you took the meat out to thaw, you didn't.
2. If you're wondering if you left the cofee pot plugged in, you did.

Jaffe's Precept
There are some things that are impossible to knowbut it is impossible to know these things.

Ground Rules for
Laboratory Workers
When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.

Second Law of Office Murphology
Office machines that function perfectly during normal business hours will break down when you return to the office at night to use them for personal business.

Law of the Individual
Nobody really cares or understands what anyone else is doing.

Matsch's Law
It's better to have a horrible ending than to have horrors without end.

Jacobson's Law
The less work an organization produces, the more frequently it reorganizes.

Theory of Selective Supervision
The one time in the day you lean back and relax is the one time the boss walks through the office.

Second Law of Class Scheduling
A prerequisite for a desired course will be offered only during the semester following the desired course.

Lerman's Law of Technology
Any technical problem can be overcome given enough time and money. LERMAN'S COROLLARY: You are never given enough time or money.

Finagle's Eighth Rule
Teamwork is essential. It allows you to blame someone else.

Law of Reruns
If you have watched only one episode of a TV series, and you watch a rerun, it will be a rerun of the same episode.

Swipple's Rule of Order
He who shouts loudest has thefoor

Gilb's First Law of

Computer Unreliability
Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.

Matz's Maxim
A conclusion is the place where you get tired Of thinking

Farmer's Credo
Sow your wild oats on Saturday night-then on Sunday pray for a crop failure.

Terman's Law of Innovation
If you want a track team to win the high jump, you find one person who can jump seven feet, not seven people who can jump one foot.

Ryan's Application of Parkinson's Law Possessions increase to fill the space available for their storage.

Seit's Law of Higher Education
The one course you must take to graduate will not be offered during your last semester.

Stenderup's Law
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to catch up.

The Watergate Principle
Government corruption is always reported in the past tense.

Lovka's First
Political Principle
There is no sincerity like a politician telling c lie.

The Fifth Rule of Politics
When a politician gets an idea, he usually gets it wrong.

Firmage's Law of Time
Management
When you finally take time to smell the roses, you will find out you have hay fever.

Third Law of Kitchen Confusion
You are always complimented on the item that took the least efort to prepare. EXAMPLE: If you make roast turkey you will be complimented on the potatoes.

Paul's Law
	You can't fall off the floor 
CHAPMAN'S COMMENTARY ON PAUL'S LAW: 
It takes children three years to learn Paul's Law.

The Party Law
The more food you prepare, the less your guests eat.

Woodside's Grocery Principle
The bag with the eggs in it is the bag that breaks.

The Extended Rule of Money Dynamics 
A check due to you takes two weeks to arrive. The bills you accrue arrive the next day.

Drummond's Law of
Personnel Recruiting
The ideal resume will turn up one day after the job is filled.

The Siddhartha Principle
You cannot cross a river in two strides.

First Law of Corporate Planning
Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.

Mae West's Observation
To err is human, but it feels divine.

Beach's Law
No two identical parts are alike.

Last Law of Product Design
If you can't fix it, feature it.

Heller's Law
The first myth of management is that it exists 
JOHNSON'S COROLLARY: Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within an organization.

Law of the Perversity of Nature
You cannot successfully determine before hand which side of the bread to butter.

Hlade's Law
If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy man-he will find an easier way to do it.

Price's First Law
If everybody doesn't want it, nobody gets it.

Warren's Rule

To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.

Weber's Definition
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.

Second Law of Kitchen Confusion
Once a dish is fouled up, anything added to save it only makes it worse.

Lee's Law
In any dealings with a collective body of people, the people will always be more tacky than originally expected.

Spencer's Laws of Accountancy
1. Trial balances don't.
2. Working capital doesn't.
3. Liquidity tends to run out.
4. Return on investments won't.

Fifth Law of Unreliability
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

Perlsweig's Second Law
Whatever goes around, comes around.

Rush's Rule of Gravity
When you drop change at a vending machine, the pennies will fall nearby while all other coins will roll out of sight.

The Smiths' Law
No real problem has a solution.

Wethern's Law
of Suspended Judgment
Assumption is the mother of all screwups.

Berra's Second Law

Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked.

Berra's First Law
You can observe a lot just by watching.

Hardin's Law
You can never do just one thing.

Telesco's Second Law of Nursing
there are two kinds of adhesive tape: the one :hat won't stay on and the one that won't come off.

The Computer
Programmer's Lament
Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.

Second Law of
Computer Programming
The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.

	Indisputable Law of Sports Contracts The more money the free agent signs for, less effective he is the following season.

Silvers' Law of Doctoring
It never heals correctly.

the

The Bumper-to-Bumper Belief
-

Traffic congestion increases in proportion to the length of time the street is supervised by a traffic control officer

Allen's Law
Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

	Davis' Law
If a headline ends in a question mark, the
answer is "no."

Jaruk's Second Law
If it would be cheaper to buy a new unit, the company will insist upon repairing the old one.
COROLLARY: If it would be cheaper to repair the old one, the company will insist upon buying the latest model.

First Law of
Computer Programming
Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

Spencer's Laws of Data
1. Anyone can make a decision given enough facts.
2. A good manager can make a decision without enough facts.
3. A perfect manager can operate in perfect ignorance.

The Rule of Law
If the facts are against you. argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts and the law are against you. yell like hell.

Fish's First Law
of Animal Behavior
The probability of a cat eating its dinner has nothing to do with the price of the food placed before it.

Brook's Law
Adding personnel to a late software project makes it later.

Universal Equine Equation
At any particular time, there are more horses' asses in the world than horses.

Gray's Bus Law
A bus will arrive only when the would-be rider has walked to a point so close to the destination that it is no longer worthwhile boarding the bus.

Lee's Law of Electrical Repair
The simpler it looks, the more problems it hides.

	Eddie's First Law of Business Never conduct negotiations before 10:00 A.M. or after 4:00 P .m. Before 10:00 A.M. you'll appear too anxious, and after 4:00 P. M. they'll think, you're desperate.

Aigner's Axiom
No matter how well you perform your job, a superior will seek to modes the results.

Meadow's Maxim
You can't push on a rope.

Atwood's Fourteenth Corollary
No books are lost by lending except those you particularly wanted to keep.

Johnson's Second Law
f you miss one issue of any magazine, it will be the issue that contained the article, story :)r installment you were most anxious to read.
COROLLARY: A11 of your friends either -hissed it, lost it or threw it out.

Bromberg's Second
Law of Automotive Repair
No matter how minor the task, you will inevitably end up covered with grease and rotor oil.

Femo's Law of Automotive Repair
If you drop something, it will never reach the ground.

Bess' Universal Principles
1. The telephone will ring when you are outside the door, fumbling for your keys. 2. You will reach it just in time to hear the click of the caller hanging up.

Las Vegas Law
Never bet on a loser because you think his luck is bound to change.

Collins' Conference Principle
The speaker with the most monotonous voice speaks after the big meal.

Rule of Feline Frustration
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap
and looks utterly content and adorable, you will suddenly want to go to the bathroom.

Rule of the Great
When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep thoughts, they are probably thinking about lunch.

First Law of Bridge
It's always the partner's fault.

The Airplane Law
When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer to is on time.

Jan and Martha's
Law of the Beauty Shop
The most flattering comments on your hair come the day before you're scheduled to have it cut.

Amerikaner's
Law of Child Rearing
The child who begs to sleep late on school days will be up before dawn on the weekends.

Second Rule of
Environmental Protection
The most efficient way to dispose of toxic waste is to reclassify the waste as non-toxic.

Rudnicki's Nobel Principle
Only someone who understands somethi absolutely can explain it so no one else c

understand it.

Goldenstern's Law
1. Always hire a rich attorney. 2. Never buy from a rich salesperson.

Golub's Second
Law of Computerdom
A carelessly planned project takes three tin longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned project takes only twice as long.

Spark's First Rule
Strive to look tremendously important.

Lieberman's Law
Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter sinc nobody listens.

Golub's First Law of
Computerdom
Fuzzy project objectives are used to avoid the embarrassment of estimating the corre ponding costs.

Jana's Second Law of Love
Better a pebble given out of love than diamond out of duty.

Cleve's Conundrum
Those who become part of a larger picture don't appear smaller.

Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle
The location of all objects cannot be know simultaneously. COROLLARY: If a lost thing is found, something else will disappear.

Welwood's Axiom
Disorder expands proportionately to the tolerance for it.

Christy's Computer Axioms
1. Backup files are never complete. 2. Software bugs are correctable only after the software is judged obsolete.

Boob's Law
You always find something in the last place you look.

Richard's Complementary
Rules of Ownership
1. If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away. 2. If you throw anything away, you will need it as soon as it is no longer accessible. ERBENICH'S EXTENSION: If you keep it and you need it, you won't be able to find it.

Thompson's Rule of Warehousing
To ensure immediate need of a carton from the shelf, put something very large and heavy in front of it.

Park's Law of Insurance
Rates and Taxes
Whatever goes up, stays up.

Law of Annoyance
When working on a project, if you put away a tool that you are certain you're finished with, you will need it instantly.

Law of Highway Construction
The most heavily traveled streets spend the most time under repair.

Patry's Law
If you know something can go wrong, and take due precautions against it, something else will go wrong.

George's Law
All pluses have their minuses.

First Law of Business Meetings
The number of times the lead in a pencil will break is in direct proportion to the importance of the notes being taken.

Tussman's Law
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Minton's Law of Painting
Any paint, no matter what the quality or composition, will adhere permanently to any surface, prepared or otherwise, if applied accidentally.

Dasgupta's Refutation
of the Law of Thermodynamics
Two physical bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time... unless they are riding on a crowded bus.

Perlsweig's Law
People who can least afford to pay rent, pay rent.
People who can most afford to pay rent, build up equity.

Law of the Search
The first place to look for anything is the last place you would expect to find it.

Aristotle's Dictum
One should always prefer the probab impossible to the improbable possible.

Diner's Dilemma
A clean tie attracts the soup of the day.

Heid's First Law
Women's liberation didn't.

The Sagan Fallacy
To say a human being is nothing 1 molecules and atoms is like sayinc Shakespearian play is nothing but words c letters.

Gualtieri's Law of Inertia
Where there's a will, there's a won't.

The Roman Rule
The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.

Soper's Law
Any bureaucracy reorganized to enhance
efficiency is immediately indistinguishab from its predecessor.

Skoff s Law
A child will not spill on a dirty floor

Tracey's Time Observation
Good times end too quickly. Bad times go on forever.

First Law of Money Dynamics
A surprise monetary windfall will be accompanied by an unexpected expense of the same amount.

Eng's Principle
The easier it is to do, the harder it is to change.

The Bureaucracy Principle
Only a bureaucracy can fight a bureaucracy.

Witten's Law
Whenever you cut your fingernails, you wil find a need for them an hour later.

Firmage's Law of Family Planning
The next pregnancy comes nine months after the last cloth diaper is thrown away.

The Grocery Bag Law
The candy bar you planned to eat on the way home from the market is hidden at the bottom of the grocery bag.

Van Gogh's Law
Whatever plan one makes, there is a hidden difficulty somewhere.

Lovka's Other Advice
Never rely on a person who uses "party" as a verb.

Weiner's Law of Libraries
There are no answers, only cross-references.

Sociology's Iron Law of Oligarchy
In every organized activity, no matter the
sphere, a small number will become the
oligarchical leaders and the others will follow.

Poor Wife's Lament (Moses' Motto)
It is better to wander forty years in the desert than to stop,and ask directions.

Naeser's Law
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make t damnfoolproof.

Harrison's Postulate
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Shirley's Law
Most people deserve each other.

Firmage's Rule of Auto Repair
That which is attached with only two bolts is directly behind something attached with eight.

Ostrofsky's Law
The size of the rip in the article that you just tore out of the newspaper is directly proportional to the importance of the article.

First Rule of Environmental Protection
The species is protected only after it is hopelessly depleted.

Glynn's Fourth Corollary The amount of aggravation inherent to a business transaction is inversely proportional to the profit.

Fant's Law When attempting to open a locked door with only one hand free, the key will be in the opposite pocket.

First Law of Travel
It always takes longer to get there than to get back.

Cafeteria Law
The one item you had your eye on the minute you walked in will be taken by the person in front of you.

Edelstein's Advice
Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.

Grossman's Misquote
of H. L. Mencken
Complex problems have simple, easy-to-understand wrong answers.

Imbesi's Law of the Conservation of Filth
In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.
FREEMAN'S EXTENSION: . . . but you can get everything dirty without getting anything clean.

Dykstra's Law
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

The Queue Principle
The longer you wait in line, the greater the likelihood that you are standing in the wrong line.

Flugg's Law
When you need to knock on wood, is when you realize the world is composed of aluminum and vinyl.

First Law of Final Exams
Pocket calculator batteries that have lasted all semester will fail during the math final.
COROLLARY: If you bring extra batteries, they will be defective.

Loftus' Law
Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.

Schmidt's Law
If you mess with a thing long enough, it will break.

Jones' Law of Zoos and Museums
The most interesting specimen will not be labeled.

Hutchison's Law
If a situation requires undivided attention, it will occur simultaneously with a compelling distraction.

Vile's Law of Communication
No one is listening until you make a mistake.

Perrussel's Law
There is no job so simple that it cannot be done wrong.

Ducharme's Precept
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.

Tillis' Organizational Principle
If you file it, you'll know where it is but never need it. If you don't file it, you'll need it but never know where it is.

Vile's Law of Value
The more an item costs, the farther you have to send it for repairs.

Pope's Law
Chipped dishes never break.

Ringwald's Law of Household Geometry
Any horizontal surface is soon piled up.

Prescher's Law of Exams
If you don't know the answer, someone will ask the question.

Thiessen's Law of Gastronomy
The hardness of the butter is in direct proportion to the softness of the roll.

Second Law of Final Exams
During your toughest final for the first time all year-the most distractingly attractive student in class will sit next to you.

O'Brien's Variation
on Etorre's Observation
If you change lines, the one you just left will start to moue faster than the one you are in.
KENTON'S COROLLARY: Switching back screws up both lines and makes everybody angry.

Etorre's Observation
The other line moves faster.

Westheimer's Rule
To estimate the time it takes to do a task, estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by two and change the unit of measure to the next highest unit. Thus we allocate two days for a one-hour task.

Parkinson's Second Law
Expenditures rise to meet income.

Hoffer's Law
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

Seay's Law
Nothing ever comes out as planned.

Weinberg's First Law
Progress is made on alternate Fridays.

John's Collateral Corollary
In order to get a loan you must first prove you don't need it.

Bocklage's Law
He who laughs last probably didn't get the joke.

Schopenhaur's Law of Entropy
If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, you get sewage.

Colridge's Law
Extremes meet.

The 90/90 Rule of Project Schedules
The first 90 percent of the task takes 10 percent of the time. The last 10 percent of the task takes 90 percent of the time.

Cheops' Law
Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

Parkinson's Law of Delay
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

Wiker's Law
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

Malek's Law 
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.

Edds' Law of Radiology
The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body you are required to place upon it.

First Law of Socio-Genetics
Celibacy is not hereditary.

Barth's Distinction
There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't.

Mr. Cole's Axiom
The sum of the intelligence on the planet remains a constant; the population, however, continues to grow.

Weinberg's Second Law
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would have destroyed civilization.

Weiler's Law
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

Owens' Law for Secretaries
As soon as you sit down with a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something that will last until the coffee is cold.

O'Brien's Principle
(the $357.73 theory)
Auditors always reject any expense account with a bottom line divisible by 5 or 10.

Reverend Chichester's Law
If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down.

Levy's Ninth Law
Only God can make a random selection.

O'Brien's Law
Nothing is ever done for the right reasons.

Law of Institutions
The opulence of the front office decor varies inversely with the fundamental solvency of the firm.

Marks' Law
A fool and your money are soon partners.

Phil's Law of Design: It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

2.  Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug.

3.  Paul's Law:  You can't fall off the floor.

4.  Heller's Law:  The first myth of management is that it exists.

5.  First Law of Bicycling:- No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and
against the wind.

6.  Osborn's Law:  Variables won't, constants aren't.

7.  Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers
wrote programs, then the  first woodpecker that came along would destroy
civilization.

8.  First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary.

9.  Parker's Law:  Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

10.  Hartley's First Law:  You can lead a horse to water, but if you can
get him to float on his back, you've got something.

11.  Stella's Rule: While your friend holds you affectionately by both your 
hands you are safe, for you can watch both of his.

12.  Mel's Law: Those who can't write, write manuals.

13.  Rockefeller's Maxim: Never call a man a fool.  Borrow from him.

14.  Main's Law:- For every action there is an equal and opposite government
program.

15.  Pohl's Law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere will not hate
it.

16.  Arthur's Law: Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a 
number and then give it back to them.

17.  Dick's Finding: Duct tape is like the Force.  It has a light side and it
has a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

18.  Scott's First Law:  No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look
right.

19.  Dewey's Discovery: If you don't care where you are, then you aren't
lost.

20. Scott's Second Law: It is easier to change the specification to fit the 
program than vice-versa.

21. J.P.Getty's Theory: If you can count your money, you don't have a billion
dollars.

22.  Fred's Finding: If you think nobody cares you're alive, try missing a 
couple of car payments.

23.  Micro Credo:  Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.

24.  Forster's Proposition: There are 3 ways to get something done:-   do it 
yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it.

25.  Ginsberg's Theorem:-

1)  you can't win
2)  you can't break even
3)  you can't even quit the game

26.  Iron Law of Distribution:- Them that has, gets.

27.  Weiler's Law:-  Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to
do it himself.

28.  Hartley's 2nd Law:-  Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.

29.  Boob's Law: You always find something in the last place you look.

30.  Borel's Law: Things are more like they used to be than they are now.

31.  Slick's Third Law of the Universe: There are 2 types of dirt: The dark
kind, which is attracted to light objects and the light kind, which is
attracted to dark objects.

32.  Triton's Law: Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors 
in the mail.  Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
Boss is reading it.

33.  Law of Desktops:  Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by 
spontaneously moving from where you left them to where you can't find them.

34.  Velilind's Law of Experimentation:-

1.  If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once.
2.  If a straight line is required, obtain only 2 data points.

35.  Colvard's Logical Premise: All probabilities are 50%.  Either a thing
will happen or it won't.

36.  Paul's Declaration: If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out
but 
garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow ennobled and none dare criticise it.

37.  Donnamarie's Equation: The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member
of 
the group divided by the number of people in the group.