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Really Cheap Thoughts: Murphy's Law
Really Cheap Thoughts: Murphy's Law
Murphy’s Law: The more you fear something the more it will happen.
Kidlin’s Law:
If you can write the problem down clearly then the matter is half solved.
Gilbert’s Law
The biggest problem at work is that no one tells you what to do.
Walson’s Law
If you put information and intelligence first at all times then the money keeps
coming in.
Falkland’s Law
When you don’t have to make a decision then do not make a decision.
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Index on Science Thoughts Index
Murphy's Law
Murphy's Laws on Business and Management
Murphy's Laws on Cleanliness and Organization
Murphy's Laws on Combat
Murphy's Laws on Computers, Software, and Programming
Murphy's Laws on Education
Murphy's Laws on Experience
Murphy's Laws on Experts
Murphy's Laws on Medicine
Murphy's Laws on Money and Finances
Murphy's Laws on People
Murphy's Laws on Politics
Murphy's Laws on Science and Research
Murphy's Laws on Technology
Murphy's Laws on The Way Things Are
Murphy's Law
Murphy's Third Law: Everything takes longer than you think it will.
Murphy's Fourth Law: If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
Corollary: If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then.
Murphy's Sixth Law: If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
Murphy's Eighth Law: If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously
overlooked something.
Murphy's Tenth Law: Mother nature is a bitch.
Murphy's Eleventh Law: It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.
Murphy's Twelfth Law: Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be
done first.
Murphy's Fourteenth Law: If anything can't go wrong on its own, someone will make it go
wrong.
Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work.
Murphy's Time-Action Quandary: You never know how soon is too late.
Proof of Murphy's Law: Murphy's Law cannot be proven, yet is correct, as when you try to
prove Murphy's Law, you will see that the proof is incorrect. This is obviously due to
Murphy's Law, therefore Murphy's Law is correct and proven.
Stewart's Corollary to Murphy's Law: Murphy's Law may be delayed or suspended for an
indefinite period of time, provided that such delay or suspension will result in a greater
catastrophe at a later date.
A carelessly planned project takes three times longer than expected; a carefully planned
project will only take twice as long.
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
André Weil's Law of Faculties: First-rate people hire other first-rate people. Second-rate
people hire third-rate people. Third-rate people hire fifth-rate people.
Berkowitz's Postulate: A clean desk gives a sense of relief and a plan for impending disaster.
Biondi's Law: If your project doesn't work, look for the part you didn't think was important.
Bove's Theorem: The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal increases as the
deadline approaches.
Brien's First Law: At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to
succeed in spite of itself runs out.
Completion of any task within the allocated time and budget does not bring credit upon the
performance personnel — it merely proves that the task was easier than expected.
Conway's Law: In any organization there is one person who knows what is going on. That
person must be fired.
Cropp's Law: The amount of work done varies inversely with the amount of time spent in the
office.
Dr. Samuelson's Reflection: The real objective of a committee is not to reach a decision, but
to avoid it.
First Law of Holes: The first step in getting out of the hole your dug for yourself is to stop
digging.
Second Law of Holes: If a boss digs himself into a hole, all subordinates are expected to
jump in with him.
Third Law of Holes: If a subordinate digs a hole, never expect the boss to jump in with him.
Fourth Law of Holes: If you expect to miss the holes others have left in your path to
success, stop looking back at the ones you just climbed out of.
Fitz-Gibbon's Law: Creativity varies inversely with the number of cooks involved with the
broth.
Glasser's Corollary: If, of the seven hours you spend at work, six hours and fifty-five
minutes are spent working at your desk, and the rest of the time you throw the bull with your
cubicle-mate, the time at which your supervisor will walk in and ask what you're doing can
be determined to within five minutes.
Hill's First Law of Salesmanship: Treat the customer like a mushroom; keep him in the dark
and spread manure on him at frequent intervals.
Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss putting in an honest day's work.
Sanrio's Rule of Bureaucratic Funding (a.k.a. The Serve Yourself Solution): The first
expenditure of new revenue made available to a bureaucratic agency will be used to expand
the administration of the program rather than for the needs of the program itself.
The Dilbert Principle: Incompetent employees are promoted to the position where they can
do the least damage — management. (Scott Adams)
The ideal resume will turn up one day after the position is filled.
The Law of Predicted Results: Market research can be conducted and interpreted to prove
any desired conclusion.
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.
Murphy's Laws on Cleanliness and Organization
A bathroom hook will be loaded to capacity immediately upon becoming available. This also
applies to freeways, closets, playgrounds, downtown hotels, taxis, parking lots, wallets,
purses, pockets, and so on. The list is endless.
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ten
percent of the time; the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
Paul's Second Law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to catch up.
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.
When reviewing your notes for a test, the most important ones will be illegible.
A grenade with a seven second fuse will always burn down in four seconds.
A "sucking chest wound" is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
Field experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
If only one solution can be found for a field problem, then it is usually a stupid solution.
Success occurs when no one is looking, failure occurs when the General is watching.
The more a weapon costs, the farther you will have to send it away to be repaired.
The most dangerous thing in the world is a Second Lieutenant with a map and a compass.
The worse the weather, the more you are required to be out in it.
Whenever you have plenty of ammo, you never miss. Whenever you are low on ammo, you
can't hit the broad side of a barn.
A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as twenty people working twenty years.
Any cool program always requires more memory than you have.
Demian's Observation: There is always one item on the screen menu that is mislabeled and
should read ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Disks are always full. It is futile to try to get more disk space. Data expands to fill any void.
Dr. Caligari's Come-Back: A bad sector disk error occurs only after you've done several
hours of work without performing a backup.
Franklin's Rule: Blessed is the end user who expects nothing, for he/she will not be
disappointed.
If a program actually fits in memory and has enough disk space, it is guaranteed to crash.
Corollary: If such a program has not crashed yet, it is waiting for a critical moment before it
crashes.
No matter how good a deal you get on computer components, the price will always drop
immediately after the purchase.
Software bugs are impossible to detect by anybody except the end user.
The speed with which components become obsolete is directly proportional their price.
Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
When you finally buy enough memory, you will not have enough disk space.
Fourth Law of Applied Terror: The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
Corollary: Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do except study for that
instructor's course.
Fifth Law of Applied Terror: If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your
book. Corollary: If you are given a take-home test, you will forget where you live.
Rahilly's Law of Academic Administration: Remember that not all the faculty have all their
faculties.
Experience is a wonderful thing. It allows you to recognize a mistake each time you repeat it.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
Fresco's Discovery: If you knew what you were doing, you'd probably be bored.
Corollary: Just because you're bored doesn't mean you know what you're doing.
The trouble with using experience as a guide is that the final exam often comes first and then
the lesson.
A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely
everything about nothing.
Dr. Reyer's Reflection: A professional is one who does a good job even when he doesn't feel
like it.
Gummidge's Law: The amount of expertise varies in inverse proportion to the number of
statements understood by the general public.
Ryan's Law: Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish yourself as an
expert.
Some people manage by the book, even they don't know who wrote the book, or even what
book.
To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.
Van Oech's Law: An expert really doesn't know anymore than you do. He is merely better
organized and has slides.
Weiler's Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
Weinberg's Corollary: An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on
to the grand fallacy.
Frisch's Law: It take one woman nine months to have a baby, no matter how many men you
put on the job.
Firestone's Negative Reformulation of Frisch's Law: You cannot have a baby in one month
by getting nine women pregnant.
Shalit's Drugstore Observation: These pills can't be habit-forming; I've been taking them for
years.
After a raise in salary you will have less money at the end of the month than you had before.
Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
If only one price can be obtained for a quotation, the price will be unreasonable.
If you think nobody cares you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
Joel's Law of Economics: First Law: For every economist, there is an equal and opposite
economist. Second Law: They are both wrong.
Lerman's Law of Technology: Any technical problem can be overcome given enough time
and money.
Never ask the barber if you need a haircut or a salesman if his is a good price.
The book you spent $20.95 for today will come out in paperback tomorrow.
When there are sufficient funds in the checking account, checks take two weeks to clear.
When there are insufficient funds, checks clear overnight.
Murphy's Laws on People
(People are a Pain)
A compromise is the art of dividing the cake in such a way that each one thinks he is getting
the biggest piece.
A little help at the right time is better than a lot of help at the wrong time.
A person who can't lead and won't follow makes a dandy roadblock.
Albrecht's Law: Social innovations tend to the level of minimum tolerable well-being.
"As a matter of fact" is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn't.
Barth's Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types,
and those who don't.
Bodies in motion tend to remain in motion. Bodies at rest tend to remain in bed.
Brooke's Law: Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers
something that either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
Bula's Truisms:
Beauty is only skin deep, but it's a superficial world.
Beauty's in the eye of the beholder, yet pin-ups find plenty of room.
Burr's Law: You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the
time, and that's sufficient.
Cohen’s Law: People are divided into two groups — the righteous and the unrighteous —
and the righteous do the dividing.
Cutler Webster's Law: There are two sides to every argument, unless a person is personally
involved, in which case there is only one.
DeVyver's Law: Given a sufficient number of people and an adequate amount of time, you
can create insurmountable opposition to the most inconsequential idea.
Ducharm's Axiom: If you view a problem closely enough, you will recognize yourself as
part of the problem.
Ferris' Frothing: Whatever their faults, the Communists never created canned laughter.
First Law of Debate: Never argue with a fool — people might forget who's who.
Glyme's Formula For Success: The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that,
you've got it made.
Grave's Law: As soon as you make something idiot-proof, along comes another idiot.
Green's Law Of Debate: Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
Half the population is below median intelligence. Well over half the population is above
average. This is due to the fact that there is a limit to human intelligence, but no limit to
human stupidity.
Hodge's Homily: There comes a time in a man's life when he must rise above principle.
Howe's Law: Every man has a scheme that will not work.
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.
Jone's Law: Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and
stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress — in direct proportion
to the importance of the original contribution.
Jones's Law: The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he can
blame it on.
Just remember that it takes forty-two muscles to frown and only four muscles to flip 'em the
bird.
Kopcha's Rule: There is always one more son of a bitch than you counted on.
Lacopi's Law: After food and sex, man's greatest drive is to tell the other fellow how to do
his job.
Langsam’s Ornithological Axiom: It’s difficult to soar with eagles when you work with
turkeys.
Law of Personal Expertise: Just when you get really good at something, they don't need you
to do it any more.
Law of Volunteer Labor: People are always available for work in the past tense.
Levy's Laws:
To have a sense of humor is to be a tragic figure.
Any discovery is more likely to be exploited by the wicked than applied by the virtuous.
No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.
Eternal boredom is the price of vigilance.
Lyndon's Definition: An optimist is a father who lets his teen-age son take the car on a date.
A pessimist is a father who will not. A cynic is a father who did.
Malek's Law: Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
Mark Twain's Rule: Only kings, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use
the editorial 'we.'
Murphy's Societal Axiom: There is nothing more dangerous than good intentions combined
with stupidity.
Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
Never judge a man till you have walked a mile in his shoes, 'cuz by then, he's a mile away,
you've got his shoes, and you can say whatever the hell you want to.
Nolan's Observation: The difference between smart people and dumb people isn't that smart
people don't make mistakes. They just don't keep making the same mistake over and over
again.
Parker's Law: Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
Paulsen's Rule: Enter a purported contest and be on the sponsor's sucker list for life.
Pohl's Law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
Primary Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself — historians merely repeat each other.
Rudin's Law: In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative courses of action,
people tend to choose the worst possible course.
Shaw's Principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
Si Perkins' "People Differ" Law: Some object to the fan dancer, other to the fan.
Siwiak's Rule: The only way to make something foolproof is to keep it away from fools.
Spark's Law of Irrepressible Use: If a person has something, they feel compelled to use it
even though its use is unnecessary. Examples: The child who gets a hammer uses it. The
person who gets authority will overexercise it.
Starr's Law: It's only the people who you don't know who know what they're doing.
T. H. White's Conclusion: The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing
and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting.
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a hole in his head.
Tell a man there are 100 billion stars in the Galaxy and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench
has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.
The Apartment Dweller's Law: Your upstairs neighbors dance, your downstairs neighbors hit
the roof, and your next-door neighbors play handball.
The Apartment Dweller's Corollary: Neighbors never sleep.
The Fame and Fortune Axiom: Competence is not a prerequisite for success.
The Law of Reality: Never get into fights with ugly people, they have nothing to lose.
The Sagan Fallacy: To say a human being is nothing but molecules is like saying a
Shakespearean play is nothing but words.
The Shrink's Assessment: There's no point in worrying about apathy when you can't care
less.
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not reached their level of incompetence.
Zymurgy's Law on the Availability of Volunteer Labor: People are always available for
work in the past tense.
Diogenes' First Dictrum: The more heavily a man is supposed to be taxed, the more power
he has to escape being taxed.
Hodges' Observation: The problem with government is that it scratches where there ain't no
itch.
Nowlan's Deduction: Following the path of least resistance is what makes men and rivers
crooked.
Polis' Attorney Law: Any law enacted with more than fifty words contains at least one
loophole.
Sausage Principle: People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either
one being made.
The Politician's Rule: In politics you can often be wrong, but never in doubt.
Kling's Contrast: Statesmen tell you what is true even though it may be unpopular.
Politicians tell you what is popular even though it may be untrue.
Barr's Inertial Principle: Asking scientists to revise their theory is like asking cops to revise
the law.
Bassagordian's Basic Principle and Ultimate Axiom: By definition, when you are
investigating the unknown, you do not know what you will find or even when you have found
it.
Bowie's Theorem: If an experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.
Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the
library.
Felson's Law: To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
Finagle's Laws:
1. If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
2.1 No matter what result is anticipated, there is always someone willing to fake it.
2.2 No matter what the result, there is always someone eager to misinterpret it.
2.3 No matter what happens, there is always someone who believes it happened according to
his pet theory.
3.0 In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking,
is the mistake.
3.1 No one whom you ask for help will see it.
3.2 Everyone who stops by with unsought advice will see it immediately.
4. Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.
Wingo's Axiom: All Finagle's Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
without thinking.
Finagle's Rules:
1. To study an application best, understand it thoroughly before you start.
2. Always keep a record of data. It indicates you've been working.
3. Always draw your curves, then plot the reading.
4. In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
5. Program results should always be reproducible. They should all fail in the same way.
6. Do not believe in miracles. Rely on them.
First Law of Particle Physics: The shorter the life of the particle, the more it costs to
produce.
First Law of Scientific Progress: The advance of science can be measured by the rate at
which exceptions to previously held laws accumulate.
Corollaries:
1. Exceptions always outnumber rules.
2. There are always exceptions to the established exceptions.
3. By the time one masters the exceptions, no one recalls the rules to which they apply.
Fourth Law of Revision: After painstaking and careful analysis of a sample, you are always
told that it is the wrong sample and doesn't apply to the problem.
Futility Factor: No experiment is ever a complete failure — it can always serve as a negative
example.
Galileo's Conclusion: Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it
takes into account.
Gordon's Law: If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing well.
Grelb's Law of Erroring: In any series of calculations, errors tend to occur at the opposite
end from which you begin checking.
Gross's Postulate: Facts are not all equal. There are good facts and bad facts. Science
consists of using good facts.
Hanggi's Law: The more trivial your research, the more people will read it and agree.
Corollary: The more vital your research, the less people will understand it.
Henderson's Law of Scholarship: Research is reading two books that have never been read
to write a third that will never be read.
Hersh's Law: Biochemistry expands to fill the space and time available for its completion
and publication.
If in any problem you find yourself doing an immense amount of work, the answer can be
obtained by simple inspection.
If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by the page number.
In any given calculation, the fault will never be placed if more than one person is involved.
Corollary: In any given discovery, the credit will never be properly placed if more than one
person is involved.
Jaffe's Precept: There are some things that are impossible to know — but it is impossible to
know these things.
Law Of Continuity: Experiments should be reproducible. They should all fail in the same
way.
Law of Laboratory Work: Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.
Maier's Law: If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
Corollaries:
1. The bigger the theory, the better.
2. The experiment may be considered a success of no more than 50 percent of the observed
measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory.
Mann's Law (generalized): If a scientists uncovers a publishable fact, it will become central
to his theory.
Morton's Law: If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer.
(Murray) Gell-Mann's Law: Whatever isn't forbidden is required; thus, if there's no reason
why something shouldn't exist, then it must exist.
Parkinson's Law of Scientific Progress: The progress of science varies inversely with the
number of journals published.
Rocky's Lemma of Innovative Prevention: Unless the results are known in advance, funding
agencies will reject the proposal.
Rule of Accuracy: When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you
know the answer.
Second Law of Particle Physics: The basic building blocks of matter do not occur in nature.
The Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which
side of the bread to butter.
The Law of the Too Solid Goof: In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously
correct beyond all need of checking contain the errors.
Corollary 1: No one you ask for help will see the error either.
Corollary 2: Any nagging intruder, who stops by with unsought advice, will spot it
immediately.
The less management demands of engineers and scientists, the greater their productivity.
The Prime Axiom: In any field of scientific endeavor, anything that can go wrong, will.
The Referee's Creed: What I don't understand I despise, what I despise I reject.
The Reliability Principle: The difference between the Laws of Nature and Murphy's Law is
that with the Laws of Nature you can count on things screwing up the same way every time.
Thumb's First Postulate: It is better to solve a problem with a crude approximation and
know the truth, plus or minus 10 percent, than to demand an exact solution and not know the
truth at all.
Thumb's Second Postulate: An easily understood, workable falsehood is more useful than a
complex, incomprehensible truth.
Williams and Holland's Law: If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
statistical methods.
Wingo's Research Principle: The bigger the discovery, the more likely it was made while
testing for something else.
Wyszowski's Laws:
1. No experiment is reproducible.
2. Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.
Corollary: The greater the funding, the longer it takes to make the mistake.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that
works.
A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.
A piece of electronic equipment is housed in a beautifully designed cabinet, and at the side or
on top is a little box containing the components which the designer forgot to make room for.
After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.
All warranty and guarantee clauses become invalid upon payment of the final invoice.
Allen's (Or Cann's) Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.
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.
Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner.
As soon as the stewardess serves the coffee, the airline encounters turbulence.
Cook's Cogitation: When putting cheese in a mousetrap, always leave room for the mouse.
Corry's Law: Paper is always strongest at the perforations.
DeVrie's Dilemma: If you hit two typewriter keys simultaneously, the one you don't want to
hit the paper does.
If several thing can go wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go
wrong.
Launegayer's Maxim: All the world's an analog tape, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Mr. Cooper's Law: If you do not understand a particular word in a piece of technical writing,
ignore it. The piece will make perfect sense without it.
Bogovich's Corollary to Mr. Cooper's Law: If the piece makes no sense without the word, it
will make no sense with the word.
Murphy's Law for Electricians: Any wire cut to length will be too short.
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to make it complex and
wonderful.
Ralph's Observation: It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize you are in a
hurry.
Rapoport's Rule of the Roller Skate Key: Certain items that are crucial to a given activity
will show up with uncommon regularity until the day when that activity is planned. At this
point, the item in question will disappear from the face of the earth.
Segal's Law: A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never
sure.
The Law of Repair: It costs more to fix it than to buy a new one.
The maintenance engineer will never have seen a model quite like yours before.
The more an item costs, the farther you have to send it for repairs.
Theory of Assembly: Instructions are that which will be read as a last resort.
A phenomenon known to anyone who has ever lit fires: You can throw a burnt match out the
window of your car and start a forest fire while you can use two boxes of matches and a
whole edition of the Sunday paper without being able to start a fire under the dry logs in your
fireplace.
Anything that happens enough times to irritate you will happen at least once more.
Aristotle's Dictum: One should always prefer the probable impossible to the improbable
possible.
Arthur C. Clarke's Law: It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls... if thou art in the bathtub, it tolls for thee.
Boob's Law: You always find something in the last place you look.
Chisolm's Law of Inevitability: Any time things appear to be going better, you have
overlooked something. (Shirley Chisholm)
Dickson’s Gardening Rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a
weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a
valuable plant.
Ed's Law of Radiology: The colder the X-ray table, the more body you are required to place
upon it.
Epstein's Axiom: With extremely few exceptions, nothing is worth the trouble.
Etorre's Observation: The other line moves faster. This applies to all lines — bank,
supermarket, tollbooth, customs, and so on. And don't try to change lines. The Other Line —
the one you were in originally — will then move faster. (Barbara Ettore)
Finagle's Corollary: On a seasonally adjusted basis, there are only six months in a year.
Foster's Thought: If polls are so accurate, why are there so many polling companies?
George's Lament: The one exception to the rule that what goes up must come down is the
landing gear.
Gerhardt's Law: If you find something you like, buy a lifetime supply. They are going to
stop making it.
Given the most inappropriate time for something to go wrong, that's when it will occur.
He who dies with the most toys, is, nonetheless, still dead.
He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.
Hoare's Law of Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to
get out.
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's
Law into account.
How long a minute is depends upon which side of the bathroom door you're on.
Hubbard's Law: Don't take life too seriously; you won't get out of it alive.
If at first you don't succeed, sky diving is definitely not for you.
If good luck is when preparation meets opportunity, then bad luck must be when poor
planning meets a Mack truck.
It's the early bird who gets the worm but it's the second mouse who gets the cheese.
Jerry's Law: Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
Juhani's Law: The compromise will always be more expensive than either of the
suggestions it is compromising.
Kipling's Errata: If you keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you don't
understand the problem.
Laocoön's Law of Improbable Generosity: Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, but do check
for Greek solders elsewhere in its anatomy.
Langsam's Laws
1. Everything depends.
2. Nothing is always.
3. Everything is sometimes.
Laura's Law: No child throws up in the bathroom.
Law of Probable Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
Lippka's Law: When the world falls into complete moral decay, don't be so old you can't
enjoy it.
Love letters, business contracts and money due you always arrive three weeks late, whereas
junk mail arrives the day it was sent.
Martin's Universal Law: Nothing is ever so good nor so bad that it can't be expanded to be
more so.
Murphy's Clarification of Thomas Wolfe's Law: You can go home again — you just can't
stay there.
Murphy's Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
Jenning's Corollary to Murphy's Law of Selective Gravity: The chance of the bread falling
with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
No matter which way you go, it's uphill and against the wind.
Norman's Household Hint: Give me a home where the buffalo roam, and you've got a room
full of buffalo chips.
Oler's Theorem: Everybody needs a certain level of misery in his life to ever be happy.
Corollary 1: If his misery falls below his critical level, he becomes unhappy and is driven to
seek new misery.
Corollary 2: When his total misery rises to his critical level he becomes happy again.
Oliver's Law Of Location: No matter where you are, there you are.
Pudder's Law: Anything that begins well will end badly. (Note: The converse of Pudder's
law is not true.)
Ray's Rueful Rumination: The world is full of surprises, very few of which are pleasant.
Rule of Failure: If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you have tried.
Second Rule of Environmental Protection: The most efficient way to dispose of toxic waste
is to reclassify the waste as non toxic.
Simenon's Profound Postulate: All proverbs contradict each other.
Some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant.
Steiger's Law: This is as bad as the situation can get — but don't bet on it.
Steinmetz's Rumination: There are no foolish questions, and no man becomes a fool until he
stops asking questions.
Stovall's Law of Negative Inaction: The only thing wrong with doing nothing is that you
never know when you're finished.
Teller's Commentary: Whoever learns to control the weather will have destroyed the last
safe topic of conversation.
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.
The 50-50-90 rule: Any time you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a
90% probability you'll get it wrong.
The Law of Avoiding Oversell: When putting cheese in a mousetrap, always leave room for
the mouse.
The Law of Self Sacrifice: When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.
The Law of Volunteering: If you dance with a grizzly bear, you had better let him lead.
The more you complain, the longer God lets you live.
The Spare-Parts Principle: 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 work underway.
The telephone will ring when you are outside the door, fumbling for your keys.
The "Where Are They When You Need Them?" Principle: If a man steals from you once,
he's a fool; if a man steals from you twice, you're the fool; if he steals from you thrice, the
odds are eight to five the thief and the agency charged with the theft protection are one and
the same.
There is something about a closet that makes a skeleton restless.
We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.
When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane and going the wrong way.
When you drop change at a vending machine, the pennies will fall nearby, while all other
coins will roll out of sight.
Wolf's Law, or an Optimistic View of a Pessimistic World: It isn't that things will
necessarily go wrong (Murphy's Law), but rather that they will take so much more time and
effort than you think if they are not to go wrong.
You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the track.
Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving System Dynamics: Once you open a can of worms, the
only way you can re-can them is to use a larger can. (Old worms never die; they just worm
their way into larger cans.)