Jokes and Puns: Lighten up your day!

Wood's Law: The more unworkable the urban plan, the greater the probability of implementation.

Woman's Equation: Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.

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

Wolf's Law of Tactics: If you can't beat them, have them join you.

Wolf's Law of Planning: A good place to start from is where you are.

Wolf's Law of Meetings: The only important result of a meeting is agreement about next steps.

Wolf's Law of Management: The tasks to do immediately are the minor ones; otherwise, you'll forget them. The major ones are often better to defer. They usually need more time for reflection. Besides, if you forget them, they'll remind you.

Wolf's Law of History Lessons: Those who don't study the past will repeat its errors. Those who do study it will find other ways to err.

Wolf's Law of Decision-Making: Major actions are rarely decided by more than four people. If you think a larger meeting you're attending is really "hammering out" a decision, you're probably wrong. Either the decision was agreed to by a smaller group before the meeting began, or the outcome of the larger meeting will be modified later when three or four people get together.

Wolf's Law (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.

Wober's SNIDE Rule (Satisfied Needs Incite Demand Excesses): Ideal goals grow faster than the means of attaining new goals allow.

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

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

Wingo's Axiom: All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing without thinking.

Wilson's Law of Demographics: The public is not made up of people who get their names in the newspapers.

Flip Wilson's Law: You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put a few nickles in the machine.

Will's Rule of Informed Citizenship: If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. (It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft.) Instead read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word "National".

Williams and Holland's Law: If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods.

Wilcox's Law: A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants.

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

Whole Picture Principle: Research scientists are so wrapped up in their own narrow endeavors that they cannot possibly see the whole picture of anything, including their own research.
Corollary: The Director of Research should know as little as possible about the specific subject of research he is administering.

White's Statement: Don't lose heart . . . Owen's Comment on White's Statement: . . . they might want to cut it out . . . Byrd's Addition to Owen's Comment on White's Statement: . . . and they want to avoid a lengthy search.

White's Observations of Committee Operation:

People very rarely think in groups; they talk together, they exchange information, they adjudicate, they make compromises. But they do not think; they do not create.
A really new idea affronts current agreement.
A meeting cannot be productive unless certain premises are so shared that they do not need to be discussed, and the argument can be confined to areas of disagreement. But while this kind of consensus makes a group more effective in its legitimate functions, it does not make the group a creative vehicle -- it would not be a new idea if it didn't -- and the group, impelled as it is to agree, is instinctively hostile to that which is divisive.

White's Chappaquiddick Theorem: The sooner and in more detail you announce bad news, the better.

White Flag Principle: A military disaster may produce a better postwar situation than victory.

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

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.

Wells's Law: A parade should have bands or horses, not both.

Weisman's Law of Examinations: If you're confident after you've just finished an exam, it's because you don't know enough to know better.

Weinberg's Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
Corollary: An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

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

Weidner's Queries:
The tide comes in and the tide goes out, and what have you got?
They say an elephant never forgets, but what's he got to remember?

Weber-Fechner Law: The least change in stimulus necessary to produce a perceptible change in response is proportional to the stimulus already existing.

Weaver's Law: When several reporters share a cab on an assignment, the reporter in the front seat pays for all.
Corollary (O'Doyle): No matter how many reporters share a cab, and no matter who pays, each puts the full fare on his own expense account.
Corollary (Germond): When a group of newsmen go out to dinner together, the bill is to be divided evenly among them, regardless of what each one eats and drinks.

Rule of the Way Out: Always leave room to add an explanation if it doesn't work out.

Watson's Law: The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number and significance of any persons watching it.

Washington's Law: Space expands to house the people to perform the work that Congress creates.

Walters's Law of Management: If you're already in a hole, there's no use to continue digging.

Wallace's Observation: Everything is in a state of utter dishevelment.

Walker's Law: Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve. Run with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be strengthened. Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum. Hang around with rich people and you will end by picking up the check and dying broke.

Walinsky's First Law of Political Campaigns: If there are twelve clowns in a ring, you can jump in the middle and start reciting Shakespeare, but to the audience, you'll just be the thirteenth clown.

Walinsky's Law: The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants.

Waldo's Observation: One man's red tape is another man's system.

Wain's Conclusion: The only people making money these days are the ones who sell computer paper.

Waffle's Law: A professor's enthusiasm for teaching the introductory course varies inversely with the likelihood of his having to do it.

Waddell's Law of Equipment Failure: A component's degree of reliability is directly proportional to its ease of accessibility (i.e., the harder it is to get to, the more often it breaks down).

Vonnegut's Corollary: Beauty may be only skin deep, but ugliness goes right to the core.

Von Braun's Law of Gravity: We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.

Vique's Law: A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.

Lucy Van Pelt's Observation: There must be one day above all others in each life that is the happiest.
Corollary: What if you've already had it?

Vance's Rule of 2 1/2: Any military project will take twice as long as planned, cost twice as much, and produce only half of what is wanted.

Vail's Axiom: In any human enterprise, work seeks the lowest hierarchical level.

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

Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible.

Universal Field Theory of Perversity (Mule's Law): The probability of an event's occurring varies directly with the perversity of the inanimate object involved and inversely with the product of its desirability and the effort expended to produce it.

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

Umbrella Law: You will need three umbrellas: one to leave at the office, one to leave at home, and one to leave on the train.

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

The Ultimate Law: All general statements are false.

Uhlmann's Razor: When stupidity is a sufficient explanation, there is no need to have recourse to any other. Corollary (Law of Historical Causation): "It seemed like the thing to do at the time."

Ubell's Law of Press Luncheons: At any public relations luncheon, the quality of the food is inversely related to the quality of the information.

Tylk's Law: Assumption is the mother of all foul-ups.

Twain's Rule: Only kings, editors, and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial "we".

Turner's Law: Nearly all prophecies made in public are wrong.

Turnauckas's Observation: To err is human; to really foul things up takes a computer.

Tuccille's First Law of Reality: Industry always moves in to fill an economic vacuum.

Truman's Law: If you cannot convince them, confuse them.

Troutman's Laws of Computer Programming:

Any running program is obsolete.
Any planned program costs more and takes longer.
Any useful program will have to be changed.
Any useless program will have to be documented.
The size of a program expands to fill all available memory.
The value of a program is inversely proportional to the weight of its output.
The complexity of a program grows until it exceeds the capability of its maintainers.
Any system that relies on computer reliability is unreliable.
Any system that relies on human reliability is unreliable.
Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers cannot write in English.
Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.

Law of Triviality: The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

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

First Law of Travel: No matter how many rooms there are in the motel, the fellow who starts up his car at five o'clock in the morning is always parked under your window.

Travel Axiom: He travels fastest who travels alone . . . but he hasn't anything to do when he gets there.

Transcription Square Law: The number of errors made is equal to the sum of the squares employed.

Torquemada's Law: When you are sure you're right, you have a moral duty to impose your will upon anyone who disagrees with you.

Titanic Coincidence: Most accidents in well-designed systems involve two or more events of low probability occurring in the worst possible combination.

Tipper's Law: Those who expect the biggest tips provide the worst service.

Thwartz's Theorem of Low Profile: Negative expectation thwarts realization, and self-congratulation guarantees disaster. (Or, simply put: If you think of it, it won't happen quite that way.)

Thurber's Conclusion: There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.

Thoreau's Rule: Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

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