Murphy’s Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.
O’Toole’s Commentary on Murphy’s Law: Murphy was an incurable optimist.
The Unspeakable Law: As soon as you mention something … if it’s good, it goes away; if it’s bad, it happens.
The First Law of Theatre: Everything will take longer than it really should.
The Second Law of Theatre: If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.
The Third Law of Theatre: Glory may be fleeting but obscurity lasts forever.
The Fourth Law of Theatre: The odds that you’ll screw up is directly proportional to the number of people you know in the audience.
Howe’s Law: Every man has a scheme that will not work.
Etorre’s Observation: The other line moves faster.
Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
Jenning’s Corollary to the Law of Selective Gravity: The probability of the toast landing jam side up is inversely proportional to the cost of the carpet.
Mitchell’s Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it.
Gordon’s Law: If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing well.
The REAL Golden Rule: Whosoever has the gold makes the rules.
Barth’s Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don’t.
Segal’s Law: A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. To a man with a VCR it is always 12:00.
Cole’s Law: Thinly-sliced cabbage.
The Law of the Bureaucracy: Those who polish shoes with their tongues will be promoted, no matter their ability; those with ability will be ignored.
The Second Law of the Bureaucracy: No matter how well you perform your job, a superior will seek to modify the results.
The Law of the Mops: Harold will always do it later.
The Law of Employment: Experience is something you don’t get until after you needed it.
Other Unnamed Laws
If at first you don’t succeed, destroy the evidence, FAST.
There is no job so simple that it can’t be done wrong.
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.