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Business one-liners 81
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get
you.
Just when you get going, someone injects a dose of reality with a large needle.
Just when you get really good at something, you don't need to do it anymore.
Just when you think you've won the rat race, along come faster rats.
Knowledge based on external evidence is unreliable.
Laziness is the mother of nine inventions out of ten.
Leakproof seals will.
Learn to be sincere. Even if you have to fake it.
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
Leftover nuts never match leftover bolts.
Business one-liners 82
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.
Logic can never decide what is possible or impossible.
Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.
Love letters, business contracts, and money due you always arrive three weeks
late, whereas junk mail arrives the day it was sent.
Make dust or eat dust.
Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish yourself as an
expert.
Many are called, but few are at their desks.
Many quite distinguished people have bodies similar to yours.
Business one-liners 83
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.
Maybe I can't make you do it but I sure can make you sorry you didn't!
Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge it.
Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
Men can live without air for a few minutes, without water for a few days,
without food for about two months, and without new thoughts for years on end.
Mere unassisted merit advances slowly, if it advances at all.
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
Most projects require three hands.
Most well-trodden paths lead nowhere.
Multitasking allows screwing up several things at once.
Business one-liners 84
Murphy was an optimist.
My client(sponsor/customer) doesn't know what he wants.
Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
Nature is a mother.
Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.
Needs are a function of what other people have.
Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference.
Never ask the barber if you need a haircut or a salesman if his is a good price.
Never be first to do anything.
Never be last.
Business one-liners 85
Never bet on a loser because you think his luck is about to change.
Never buy from a rich salesman.
Never do anything you wouldn't be caught dead doing.
Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
Never eat prunes when you are famished.
Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.
Never invest in anything that eats.
Never kick a man unless he's down.
Business one-liners 86
Never leave hold of what you've got until you've got hold of
something else.
Never needlessly disturb a thing at rest.
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Never put all your eggs in your pocket.
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against
it by that time.
Never say "oops" after you have submitted a job.
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
Never tell them what you wouldn't do.
Business one-liners 87
Never try to pacify someone at the height of his rage.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Never volunteer for anything.
Never wrestle a pig; you both get dirty, and he likes it.
Nice guys finish last but it is lonely at the top.
No experiment is ever a complete failure; it can always be used as a bad
example.
No good deed goes unpunished.
No man is lonely while eating spaghetti.
No man's credit is as good as his money.
Business one-liners 88
No matter how much you do, you'll never do enough.
No matter what happens, there is always somebody who knew that it would.
No matter which direction you start, it's always against the wind coming back.
No matter which way you go, it's always uphill and against the wind.
No one is listening until you make a mistake.
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
No real problem has a solution.
No two identical parts are exactly alike.
Nobody notices the big errors.
Nobody notices when things go right.
Business one-liners 89
Nobody wants to read anyone else's formulas.
Nobody told me.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
Nothing can be done in one trip.
Nothing ever comes out as planned.
Nothing is as easy as it looks.
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
Nothing is as permanent as that which is called temporary.
Nothing is as temporary as that which is called permanent.
Business one-liners 90
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
Nothing is impossible for the man who does not have to do it himself.
Nothing matters very much, and very few things matter at all.
Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less.
Of all forces acting on man, change is the most beneficial and the most cruel.
Of two possible events, only the undesired one will occur.
Office Of Precision Guesswork
Old age and treachery shall overcome youth and skill.
Business one-liners 91
Old programmers never die, they just abend.
On a beautiful day like this, it's hard to believe anybody can be unhappy; but
we will work on it.
On successive charts of the same organization, the number of boxes will never
decrease.
One child is not enough, but two children are far too many.
One good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe.
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of
one extraordinary man. - Elbert Hubbard
One of the greatest labor-saving inventions today is tomorrow.
One of those days? I have one of those lives.
One seventh of your life is spent on Mondays.
Business one-liners 92
Only a bureaucracy can fight a bureaucracy.
Only a fool can reproduce another fool's work.
Only a mediocre person is always at their best.
Only them as knows their own...knows.
Only those who attempt the absurd can acheive the impossible.
One test is worth a thousand expert opinions.
Old age is always fifteen years older than you are.
It's lonely at the top, but you eat better.
Never speculate on that which can be known for certain.
Business one-liners 93
There is one big difference between genius and stupidity; genius has
limits.
Things are more like today than they ever were before.
Things could be worse; suppose your errors were counted and published every day,
like those of a baseball player.
Things get worse under pressure.
Things go right so they can go wrnog.
Thinking is hard work. One can't bear burdens and ideas at the same time.
This "law" has been intentionally left blank.
This "law" was inadvertently left blank.
This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists and not enough
hunchbacks.
This space for rent.
Business one-liners 94
Those most opposed to serving on committees are made chairmen.
Those who live closest arrive latest.
Those with the best advice offer no advice.
To achieve the impossible, one must think the absurd; to look where everyone
else has looked, but to see what no one else has seen.
To attract maximum attention, it's hard to beat a good, big, dumb mistake.
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
To err is human. To admit it is a blunder.
To err is human. To blame it on someone else is even more human.
To err is human. To blame it on someone else is politics.
To err is human. To forgive is simply not company policy.
Business one-liners 95
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than
three men, two of them absent.
To know yourself is the ultimate form of aggression.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.
Too light for heavy work and too heavy for light work.
Treat people as if they are what they ought to be, and you help them to become
what they are capable of being.
Trust everybody...then cut the cards.
Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no good.
Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
Two heads are more numerous than one.
Business one-liners 96
Two monologues do not make a dialogue.
Two rules to success in life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know.
Two wrongs are only the beginning.
Unemployment helps stretch your coffee break.
Unless absolutely essential, borrowing to buy a depreciating asset is dumb.
Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the
proposal.
Urgency varies inversely with importance.
Usefulness is inversely proportional to its reputation for being useful.
Virtue is its own punishment.
Wasting time is an important part of living.
Business one-liners 97
We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means
doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man
who turns back soonest is the most progressive. - C.S. Lewis
We are often most in the dark when we are the most certain, and most enligthened
when we are the most confused.
We don't have the time or money to do it right, but we'll have time and money to
do it over again.
We need either less corruption or more chance to participate in it.
We totally deny the allegations, and we are trying to identify the allegators.
We sometimes get all the information, but we refuse to get the message.
We'll worry about that when we get there.
We're making progress. Things are getting worse at a slower rate.
We've always done it that way!
Wet manure is slippery. - OSHA discovery
Business one-liners 99
When all else fails, try the boss's suggestion.
When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble, delegate. When in charge, ponder.
When in doubt, predict that the present trend will continue.
When in doubt, take all the time you need to get all the facts, or all the time
you have, whichever is less.
When in doubt, use brute force.
When in trouble, delegate.
When it gets to be your turn, they change the rules.
When it's you against the world, bet on the world.
When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.
When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity. For every
week you are away and get nothing done, there is another week when your boss is
away and you get twice as much done.
Yuppie pregnant women don't go into labor, they go straight into management.
Business one-liners 100
When reviewing your notes for a test, the most important ones will be
illegible.
When someone says this is as bad as it can get, don't bet on it.
When there are sufficient funds in the checking account, checks take two weeks
to clear. When there are insufficient funds, checks clear overnight.
When you don't have an education, you've got to use your brains.
When you drop change at a vending machine, the pennies will fall nearby, while
all other coins will roll out of sight.
When the going gets tough, the smart get sneaky.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
When the product is destined to fail, the delivery system will perform
perfectly.
When they want it bad (in a rush), they get it bad.
When things are going well, someone will inevitably experiment detrimentally.
Business one-liners 101
When working hard, be sure to get up and retch every so often.
When working on a project, if you put away a tool that you're you're finished
with, you will need it instantly.
When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the
answer, provided of course you know that there is a problem.
When you are confronted by any complex social system, such as an urban center or
a hamster, with things about it that you're dissatisfied with and anxious to
fix, you cannot just step in and set about fixing with much hope of helping.
This realization is one of the sore discouragements of our century. Jay
Forrester has demonstrated it mathematically, with his computer models of cities
in which he makes clear that whatever you propose to do, based on common sense,
will almost inevitably make matters worse rather than better. You cannot meddle
with one part of a complex system from the outside without the almost risk of
setting off disastrous events that you hadn't counted on in other, remote parts.
If you want to fix something you are first obliged to understand, in detail, the
whole system, and for very large systems you can't do this without a very large
computer. Even then, the safest course seems to be to stand by and wring hands,
but not to touch. Intervening is a way of causing trouble. - Lewis Thomas, from
the essay "On Meddling" in the collection "The Medusa and the Snail", The Viking
Press, New York, 1979
When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
When you are right be logical, when you are wrong befuddle.
When you are sure you're right, you have a moral duty to impose your will upon
anyone who disagrees with you.
When you are up to your butt in alligators, it is difficult to keep your mind on
the fact that your primary objective was to drain the swamp.
When you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal.
Your own car uses more gas and oil than anyone else's.
Business one-liners 102
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with
erasers.
When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.
When your opponent is down, kick him.
Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
Where you stand depends on where you sit.
While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of
misery.
Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office automation?
Why is it that there are so many more horses' asses than there are horses? - G.
Gordon Liddy
Why worry about tomorrow? We may not make it through today.
Winning isn't everything, but losing isn't anything.
You're not drunk if you can lay on the floor without holding on.
Business one-liners 103
Wisdom consists of knowing when to avoid perfection.
Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.
Without data, yours is just another opinion.
Work hard and save your money and when you are old you will be able to buy the
things only the young can enjoy.
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of
incompetence.
Work is the curse of the drinking class.
Work may be the crabgrass of life, but money is still the water that keeps it
green.
You can always find what you're not looking for.
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of
the time, but you can make a fool of yourself any time.
You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the
time, and that should be sufficient for most purposes.
You won't skid if you stay in a rut.
Business one-liners 104
You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.
You can observe a lot just by watching.
You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put a few nickles in the
machine.
You can't fall off the floor.
You can't get here from there.
You can't guard against the arbitrary.
You can't outtalk a man who knows what he's talking about.
You can't push a rope.
You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step into it.
You can't tell which way the train went by looking at the track.
You will remember that you forgot to take out the trash when the garbage truck
is two doors away.
Business one-liners 105
You can't win. You can't break even. You can't quit the game.
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
You get the most of what you need the least.
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.
You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue; agree with him.
You never find an article until you replace it.
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
You never want the one you can afford.
You remember to mail a letter only when you're nowhere near a mailbox.
You want it when?
You will always find something in the last place you look.
Business one-liners 106
Clovis' Consideration of an Atmospheric Anomaly: The perversity of
nature is nowhere better demonstrated than by the fact that, when exposed to the
same atmosphere, bread becomes hard while crackers become soft.
Cohn's Law: The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less
time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all your time
reporting on the nothing you are doing.
Colvard's Logical Premises: All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will
happen or it won't.
Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary: This is especially true when dealing with
someone you're attracted to.
Conway's Law: In any organization, there will always be one person who knows
what's going on; this person must be fired. Corollaries: 1. Nobody whom you ask
for help will see it. 2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
Cooke's Law: In any decision situation, the amount of relevant information
available is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision.
Correspondence Corollary: An experiment may be considered a success if no more
than half of your data must be discarded to obtain correspondence with your
theory.
Business one-liners 107
Cropp's Law: The amount of work done varies inversely with the amount
of time spent in the office.
Bo Diddeley's Observation On The Law: Always take a lawyer with you, and bring
another lawyer to watch him.
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom: Project teams detest weekly progress
reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress.
Deadline-Dan's Demo Demonstration: The higher the "higher-ups" are who've come
to see your demo, the lower your chances are of giving a successful one.
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".
DeVries's Dilemma: If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
hits the paper.
Dr. Caligari's Comeback: A bad sector disk error occurs only after you've done
several hours of work without performing a backup.
Business one-liners 108
Hugh Downs' Four Rules for Investigating the Universe: Rule 1 - When
confronted with an apparent infinite or infinitely repeating pattern, expect
some variant that keeps it from being infinite. Rule 2 - When all investigation
supports Rule 1, look for a situation which violates it. Rule 3 - Be prepared
for an infinite oscillation between Rules 1 and 2. Rule 4 - Apply Rule 1.
Drew's Law of Highway Biology: The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands
directly in front of your eyes.
Ducharme's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
yourself as part of the problem.
Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
Emersons' Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make
us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
Estridge's Law: No matter how large and standardized the marketplace is, IBM can
redefine it.
Fett's Law: Never replicate a successful experiment.
Business one-liners 109
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 exam, you will
forget where you live.
Fifth Law of Procrastination: Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the
feeling that there is nothing important to do.
Finagle's Creed: Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
Finagle's Laws: 1) Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only
makes it worse. 2) No matter what results are expected, someone is always
willing to fake it. 3) No matter what the result, someone is always eager to
misinterpret it. 4) No matter what results occur, someone believes it happened
according to his pet theory. 5) If an experiment works, something has gone
wrong. 6) In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond
all need of checking, is the mistake. 7) The perversity of the universe tends
toward a maximum. 8) Do not merely believe in miracles; rely on them.
Finagle's Law Of Government Contracting: Dealing with the government is like
kicking a 300-pound sponge.
Finagle's Law Of Military Superiority: The bigger they are, the harder they hit.
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.
Business one-liners 110
First Law of Bicycling: No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and
against the wind.
First Law of Procrastination: Procrastination shortens the job and places the
responsibility for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who
imposed the deadline).
First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary.
First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself; historians merely repeat
each other.
Flo Capp's Observation: The next best thing to doing something smart is not
doing something stupid.
Flon's Law: There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is the
least bit difficult to write bad programs.
Flucard's Corollary: Anything dropped in the bathroom falls in the toilet.
Business one-liners 111
Flugg's Law: When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that
the world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
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.
Fourth Law of Revision: It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
interferences; if you have none, someone will make one for you.
Franklin's Rule: Blessed is the end user who expects nothing, for he/she will
not be disappointed.
Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem: Every major philosophy that attempts
to make life seem meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
Theorem. To wit: 1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win. 2.
Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even. 3. Mysticism is
based on the assumption that you can quit the game.
Fresco's Discovery: If you knew what you were doing, you'd probably be bored.
Fudd's First Law of Opposition: Push something hard enough and it will fall
over.
Business one-liners 112
Galbraith's Law of Human Nature: Faced with the choice between
changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody
gets busy on the proof.
Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics: 1. An object in motion will always be
headed in the wrong direction. 2. An object at rest will always be in the wrong
place. 3. The energy required to change either one of these states will always
be more than you wish to expend, but never so much as to make the task totally
impossible.
Gilb's Laws Of Unreliability: 1) 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 depends on human reliability is
unreliable. 3) Udetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to
detectable errors, which by definition are limited. 4) Investment in reliability
will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone
insists on getting some useful work done.
Ginsberg's Theorem: 1. You can't win. 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't even
quit the game.
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability: Investment in reliability will increase
until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on
getting some useful work done.
Glyme's Formula for Success: The secret to success is sincerity. Once you can
fake that, you've got it made.
Goebel's Law Of Useless Difficulty: Just because it's hard, doesn't mean it's
worth the effort.
Business one-liners 113
Goebel's Second Law Of Useless Difficulty: The fastest way to get
something done is to determine that it isn't worth doing.
Goebel's Law Of Computer Support: Troubleshooting a computer over the telephone
is like having sex through a hole in a board fence. It can be done, but it is
neither easy nor pleasant.
Goebel's Law Of Software Compatibility: A statement of absolute functional
equivalence made in bold print followed by several pages of qualifications in
fine.
Goebel's Theorem Of Software Schedules: Always multiply a software schedule by
pi. This is because you think you're going in a straight line but always end up
going full circle.
Goebel's Law Of Product Introductions: A future product release date does not
say when a product will be introduced. All it says it that you don't have a
chance of seeing it before that time.
Goebel's Observation On Utopia: If everyone believed in Peace, they would
immediately begin fighting over the best way to achieve it.
Goebel's Law Of Intellectual Obscurity: What fun is it to be an expert if you
make yourself easy to understand?
Business one-liners 114
Gold's Law: If the shoe fits, it's ugly
Goldenstern's Rules: 1. Always hire a rich attorney. 2. Never buy from a rich
salesman.
Golden Rule Of Arts And Sciences: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Gordian Maxim: If a string has one end, it has another.
Gordon's First Law: If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not
worth doing well.
Gordon's Object Lifespan Theorem: No matter the amount of care given the
purchased object, it will fuse/explode/disassemble within three days of warranty
expiration.
Gordon's Warranty Law: All warranty clauses expires upon bill payment.
Business one-liners 115
Government's Law: There is an exception to all laws.
Grabel's Law: 2 is not equal to 3, not even for large values of 2.
Gray's Law of Programming: 'n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished
in the same time as 'n' tasks.
Green's Law of Debate: Anything is possible if you don't know what you're
talking about.
Greener's Law: Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
Grelb's Reminder: Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
Gummidges's Law: The amount of expertise varies in inverse proportion to the
number of statements understood by the general public.
Business one-liners 116
Gumperson's Law: The probability of a given event occurring is
inversely proportional to its desirability.
H. L. Mencken's Law: Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Martin's
Extension: Those who cannot teach, administrate.
Hacker's Law: The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a
nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
Hall's Laws of Politics: 1) The voters want fewer taxes and more spending. 2)
Citizens want honest politicians until they want something fixed. 3)
Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend military spending,
and conservatives social spending in their own districts).
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
stupidity.
Hanson's Treatment of Time: There are never enough hours in a day, but always
too many days before Saturday.
Harp's Corollary To Estridge's Law: Your "IBM PC-compatible" computer grows more
incompatible with every passing moment.
Business one-liners 117
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab: Experience is directly
proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.
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.
Hawaiian Rules Of J.W.: 1) Never judge a day by the weather. 2) The best things
in life aren't things. 3) Tell the truth; there's less to remember. 4) Speak
softly and wear a loud aloha shirt. 5) Goals are deceptive; the unaimed arrow
never misses. 6) He who dies with the most toys, still dies. 7) Age is relative;
when you're over the hill, you pick up speed. 8) There are two ways to be rich:
make more or desire less. 9) Beauty is internal; looks mean nothing. 10) No
rain, no rainbows.
Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists.
Hinds' Law Of Computer Programming: 1) Any given program, when running, is
obsolete. 2) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed. 3) If a program
is useless, it will have to be documented. 4) Any given program will expand to
fill all available memory. 5) The value of a program is proportional to the
weight of its output. 6) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the
capability of the programmer who must maintain it. 7) Make it possible for
programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers
cannot write in English.
Hlade's Law: If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person; they will
find an easier way to do it.
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
Hofstadter's Law into account.
Business one-liners 118
Horngren's Observation: Among economists, the real world is often a
special case.
Hubbard's Law: Don't take life too seriously; you won't get out of it alive.
Hurewitz's Memory Principle: The chance of forgetting something is directly
proportional to...to... uh...
IBM Project Management Axiom: Need for project modifications increases
proportionally to project completion.
Instruction Booklet Governing Principle: Instruction booklets are lost by the
Goods Delivery Service. If not, they are listed in four languages: Japanese,
Thai, Swahili, and Mongol.
Jenkinson's Law: It won't work.
Johnson-Laird's Law: Toothache tends to start on Saturday night.
Business one-liners 119
Johnson's Corollary: Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere
within the organization.
Kramer's Law: You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the
track.
Larkinson's Law: All laws are basically false.
The Last One's Law Of Program Generators: A program generator creates programs
that are more "buggy" than the program generator.
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.
Robert E. Lee's Truce: Judgement comes from experience; experience comes from
poor judgement.
Business one-liners 120
Lieberman's Law: Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter, because
nobody listens.
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law: 'n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as 'n'
trivial tasks.
Lorenz's Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease,
your nose will begin to itch.
Lynch's Law: When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.
Manly's Maxim: Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion
with confidence.
Mason's First Law of Synergism: The one day you'd sell your soul for something,
souls are a glut.
May's Law: The quality of correlation is inversely proportional to the density
of control. (The fewer the data points, the smoother the curves.)
Business one-liners 121
Meade's Maxim: Always remember that you are absolutely unique, just
like everyone else.
Mencken's Law: There is always an easy answer to every human problem - neat,
plausible, and wrong.
Muir's Law: When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to
everything else in the universe.
Newlan's Truism: An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
Ninety-Ninety Rule Of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task
takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other
ninety percent.
Nolan's Placebo: An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.
Nowlan's Theory: He who hesitates is not only lost, but several miles from the
next freeway exit.
Business one-liners 122
Oliver's Law of Location: No matter where you go, there you are.
Orben's Packaging Discovery: For the first time in history, one bag of groceries
produces two bags of trash.
Osborn's Law: Variables won't, constants aren't.
Ozman's Laws: (1) If someone says he will do something "without fail," he won't.
(2) The more people talk on the phone, the less money they make. (3) People who
go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't. (4) Pizza always burns the roof of
your mouth.
O'Reilly's Law of the Kitchen: Cleanliness is next to impossible
O'Toole's Commentary On Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist.
Parkinson's Laws: First Law - Work expands to fill the time available for its
completion. Second Law - Expenditures rise to meet income. Fourth Law - The
number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount
of work to be done. Law of Committees - The amount of time spent by a committee
on an agenda item is inversely proportional to the cost of the item. Fifth Law -
If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good bureaucracy, public
or private, will find it. Sixth Law - Action expands to fill the void created by
human failure.
Business one-liners 123
Peter's Principle: In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to
the level of his incompetence.
Pudder's Law: Anything that begins well will end badly. (Note: The converse of
Pudder's law is not true.)
Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand
what they do not manage. Those who manage what they do not understand.
Putts-Brooks Law: Adding manpower to a late technology project only makes it
later.
Quigley's Law: Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will
attempt to use it.
Ralph's Observation: It is a mistake to let any mechanical object realise that
you are in a hurry. Corollary: On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will
first strike your toes.
Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia: If you think big enough, you'll never have
to do it.
Business one-liners 124
Rhode's Corollary To Hoare's Law: Inside every complex and unworkable
program is a useful routine struggling to be free.
Ross's Law: Bare feet magnetise sharp metal objects so they always point upwars
from the floor-especially in the dark.
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.
Rudnicki's Nobel Prize Principle: Only someone who understands something
absolutely can explain it so no one else can understand it.
Rule Of Accuracy: When working toward the solution of a problem it always helps
you to know the answer.
Ryan's Law: Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish
yourself as an expert.
Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in.
Business one-liners 125
Schemmer's Law (Organization & Programs): When an organization faces
a 20 year threat, it responds with 15-year programs, organized with 5-year
plans, managed by 3-year directors, and funded by 1-year appropriations.
Simmons's Law: The desire for racial integration increases with the square of
the distance from the actual event.
SNAFU Equations: 1) Given any problem containing N equations, there will be N+1
unknowns. 2) An object or bit of information most needed will be least
available. 3) Any device requiring service or adjustment will be least
accessible. 4) Interchangeable devices won't. 5) In any human endeavor, once you
have exhausted all possibilities and fail, there will be one solution, simple
and obvious, highly visible to everyone else. 6) Badness comes in waves.
Thoreau's Theories Of Adaptation: 1) After months of training and you finally
understand all of a program's commands, a revised version of the program arrives
with an all-new command structure. 2) After designing a useful routine that gets
around a familiar "bug" in the system, the system is revised, the "bug" taken
away, and you're left with a useless routine. 3) Efforts in improving a
program's "user friendliness" invariable lead to work in improving user's
"computer literacy". 4) That's not a "bug", that's a feature!
Thyme's Law: Everything goes wrong at once.
Universal Technical Document Units Law: Characteristics, specifications,
dimensions, and any other data included in technical documents must be stated in
exotic units, such as "tenth of troy once per barn" for pressures, or "acre
times atmosphere per kilogram" for speeds.
Vail's Second Axiom: The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to
the amount of work already completed.
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Vuilleumier's Laws For Building Electronic Prototypes: First Law -
Any pre-cut equipment is too short; this is specially true of optic fiber cables
with expensive connectors at both ends. Second Law - If n electronic components
are required, n-1 are available. Third Law (also known as "Selective
Gravitational Field") - Any tool escaping manipulator's hands will not
necessarily follow Earth's gravitational field, but will land in the most
unreachable location in the prototype, smashing on its way the most expensive
component of the prototype; this will know only one exception if the tool is
particularly heavy, in which case it will land on the manipulator's foot. Fourth
Law - When proteup first, thankfully leaving the fuses intact. Fifth Law -
Prototype npn blackboxes actually hold pnp transistors, and vice-versa. Sixth
Law - A quartz oscillator oscillates at a frequency off the rated one by a
minimum of 25%, if it does oscillate at all. Seventh Law - When the prototype
has been fully assembled according to lab instructions, a minimum of 11
components are left.
Cutler Webster's Law: There are two sides to every argument, unless a person is
personally involved, in which case there is only one.
Weiler's Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do the work.
Weinberg's Corollary: An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
Wethern's Law: Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
Business one-liners 127
Whistler's Law: You never know who is right, but you always know who
is in charge.
Whitehead's Law: The obvious answer is always overlooked.
William's Law: There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be
solved by brute strength and ignorance.
Wood's Axiom: As soon as a still-to-be-finished computer task becomes a
life-or-death situation, the power fails.
Woodward's Law: A theory is better than its explanation.
Zall's Laws: First Law - Anytime you get a mouthful of hot soup, the next thing
you do will be wrong. Second Law - How long a minute is, depends on which side
of the bathroom door you're on.
Zymurgy's First Law Of Evolving System Dynamics Once you open a can of worms,
the only way to recan them is to use a larger can.