Murphy's Laws: The Ultimate Guide to Life's Inevitable Humor.

Newton's Little-known Seventh Law: A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.

Nick the Greek's Law: All things considered, life is 9-to-5 against.

Nienberg's Law: Progress is made on alternate Fridays.

Nies's Law: The effort expended by the bureaucracy in defending any error is in direct proportion to the size of the error.

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.

Nixon's Rule: If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

Nobel Effect: There is no proposition, no matter how foolish, for which a dozen Nobel signatures cannot be collected. Furthermore, any such petition is guaranteed page-one treatment in the New York Times.

Noble's Law of Political Imagery: All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of the United States.
Corollary: Given a choice between two bald political candidates, the American people will vote for the less bald of the two.

North Carolina Equine Paradox: Vyarzerzomanimororsezassezanzerareorses?

No. 3 Pencil Principle: Make it sufficiently difficult for people to do something, and most people will stop doing it.
Corollary: If no one uses something, it isn't needed.

Nursing Mother Principle: Do not nurse a kid who wears braces.

Nyquist's Theory of Equilibrium: Equality is not when a female Einstein gets promoted to assistant professor; equality is when a female schlemiel moves ahead as fast as a male schlemiel.

Oaks's Unruly Laws for Lawmakers:
Law expands in proportion to the resources available for its enforcement.
Bad law is more likely to be supplemented than repealed.
Social legislation cannot repeal physical laws.

O'Brien's First Law of Politics: The more campaigning, the better.

O'Brien's Principle (The $357.73 Theorem): Auditors always reject any expense account with a bottom line divisible by five or ten.

O'Brien's Rule: Nothing is ever done for the right reason.

The Obvious Law: Actually, it only SEEMS as though you mustn't be deceived by appearances.

Occam's Electric Razor: The most difficult light bulb to replace burns out first and most frequently.

Occam's Razor: Entities ought not to be multiplied except from necessity. Reformulations:
The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be correct.
Whenever two hypotheses cover the facts, use the simpler of the two.
Cut the crap.

Oesner's Law (Oeser's Law?): There is a tendency for the person in the most powerful position in an organization to spend all his time serving on committees and signing letters.

Old and Kahn's Law: The efficiency of a committee meeting is inversely proportional to the number of participants and the time spent on deliberations.

Old Children's Law: If it tastes good, you can't have it. If it tastes awful, you'd better clean your plate.

Olum's Observation (and see Martha's Maxim and Farrow's Finding): If God had intended us to go around naked, He would have made us that way.

Oppenheimer's Observation: The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.

Optimum Optimorum Principle: There comes a time when one must stop suggesting and evaluating new solutions, and get on with the job of analyzing and finally implementing one pretty good solution.

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

Orion's Law: Everything breaks down.

Orwell's Law of Bridge: All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely than others.

Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't.

Otten's Law of Testimony: When a person says that, in the interest of saving time, he will summarize his prepared statement, he will talk only three times as long as if he had read the statement in the first place.

Otten's Law of Typesetting: Typesetters always correct intentional errors, but fail to correct unintentional ones.

Ozian Option: I can't give you brains, but I can give you a diploma.

Panic Instruction: When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.

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

Paradox of Selective Equality: All things being equal, all things are never equal.

Pardo's Postulates:
Anything good is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
The three faithful things in life are money, a dog, and an old woman.
Don't care if you're rich or not, as long as you live comfortably and can have everything you want.

Pareto's Law (The 20/80 Law): 20% of the customers account for 80% of the turnover, 20% of the components account for 80% of the cost, and so forth.

Parker's Rule of Parliamentary Procedure: A motion to adjourn is always in order.

Parker's Law of Political Statements: The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility, and vice versa.

Parker's Third Rule of Tech Support: If you can't navigate a one-level, five-item phone tree, you didn't need a computer anyway.

Parkin's Law of Irritation: Anything that happens enough times to irritate you will happen at least once more.

Parkinson's Axioms:
An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals.
Officials make work for each other.

Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion; the thing to be done swells in perceived importance and complexity in a direct ratio with the time to be spent in its completion.

Parkinson's Second Law: Expenditures rise to meet income.

Parkinson's Third Law: Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay.

Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.

Parkinson's Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay an important decision the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.

Parkinson's Sixth Law: The progress of science varies inversely with the number of journals published.

Parkinson's Law of Delay: Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

Parkinson's Law of Medical Research: Successful research attracts the bigger grant which makes further research impossible.

Parkinson's Law of the Telephone: The effectiveness of a telephone conversation is in inverse proportion to the time spent on it.

Parkinson's Law of 1000: An enterprise employing more than 1000 people becomes a self-perpetuating empire, creating so much internal work that it no longer needs any contact with the outside world.

Parkinson's Principle of Non-Origination: It is the essence of grantsmanship to persuade the Foundation executives that it was THEY who suggested the research project and that you were a belated convert, agreeing reluctantly to all they had proposed.

Mrs. Parkinson's Law: Heat produced by pressure expands to fill the mind available, from which it can pass only to a cooler mind.

Parson's Laws:
If you break a cup or plate, it will not be the one that was already chipped or cracked.
A place you want to get to is always just off the edge of the map you happen to have handy.
A meeting lasts at least 1 1/2 hours however short the agenda.

Dolly Parton's Principle: The bigger they are, the harder it is to see your shoes.

Pastore's Truths:
Even paranoids have enemies.
This job is marginally better than daytime TV.
On alcohol: four is one more than more than enough.

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

Patton's Law: A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.

Paturi Principle: Success is the result of behavior that completely contradicts the usual expectations about the behavior of a successful person.
Corollary: The amount of success is in inverse proportion to the effort involved in attaining it.