Jokes and Puns: Lighten up your day!

Nessen's Law: Secret sources are more credible.

Evvie Nef's Law: There is a solution to every problem; the only difficulty is finding it.

Navy Law: If you can keep your head when all about you others are losing theirs, maybe you just don't understand the situation.

Law of Nations: In an underdeveloped country, don't drink the water; in a developed country, don't breathe the air.

NASA Truisms:
Research is reading two books that have never been read in order to write a third that will never be read.
A consultant is an ordinary person a long way from home.
Statistics are a highly logical and precise method for saying a half-truth inaccurately.

NASA Skylab Rule: Don't do it if you can't keep it up.

Nader's Law: The speed of exit of a civil servant is directly proportional to the quality of his service.

Munnecke's Law: If you don't say it, they can't repeat it.

Mosher's Law: It's better to retire too soon than too late.

Morton's Law: If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer. ("What this country needs are some stronger white rats.")

Morley's Conclusion: No man is lonely while eating spaghetti.

Montagu's Maxim: The idea is to die young as late as possible.

Money Maxim: Money isn't everything. (It isn't plentiful, for instance.)

Moer's Truism: The trouble with most jobs is the resemblance to being in a sled dog team. No one gets a change of scenery, except the lead dog.

Mobil's Maxim: Bad regulation begets worse regulation.

MIST Law (Man In The Street): The number of people watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your action.

Mills's Law of Transportation Logistics:
The distance to the gate from which your flight departs is inversely proportional to the time remaining before the scheduled departure of the flight. Corollaries (Woods): 1) This remains true even as you rush to catch the flight. 2) From this it follows that you are invariably rushing the wrong way.

Miller's Law: You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step into it.

Miksch's Law: If a string has one end, then it has another end.

Mickelson's Law of Falling Objects: Any object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger object.

Michehl's Theorem: Less is more.
Pastore's Comment on Michehl's Theorem: Nothing is ultimate.

Meskimen's Laws: 1) When they want it bad (in a rush), they get it bad. 2) There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.

Merrill's Second Corollary: In the highway of life, the average happening is of about as much true significance as a dead skunk in the middle of the road.

Merrill's First Corollary: There are no winners in life; only survivors.

Merkin's Maxim: When in doubt, predict that the present trend will continue.

Mencken's Metalaw: For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong.

H. L. Mencken's Law: Those who can -- do. Those who cannot -- teach. Those who cannot teach -- administrate. (Martin's Extension)

Melcher's Law: In a bureaucracy, every routing slip will expand until it contains the maximum number of names that can be typed in a single vertical column.

Margaret Mead's Law of Human Migration: At least fifty percent of the human race doesn't want their mother-in-law within walking distance.

McNaughton's Rule: Any argument worth making within the bureaucracy must be capable of being expressed in a simple declarative sentence that is obviously true once stated.

McLean's Maxim: There are only two problems with people. One is that they don't think. The other is that they do.

McLaughlin's Law (and see Parson's Third Law): The length of any meeting is inversely proportional to the length of the agenda for that meeting.

McKenna's Law: When you are right, be logical. When you are wrong, be-fuddle.

McGurk's Law: Any improbable event which would create maximum confusion if it did occur, will occur.

McGovern's Law: The longer the title, the less important the job.

McGoon's Law: The probability of winning is inversely proportional to the amount of the wager.

McDonald's Second Law: Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and give it back to them.

McClaughry's Law of Zoning: Where zoning is not needed, it will work perfectly; where it is desperately needed, it always breaks down.

McClaughry's Law of Public Policy: Politicians who vote huge expenditures to alleviate problems get re-elected; those who propose structural changes to prevent problems get early retirement.

McCarthy's Law: Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important.

May's Mordant Maxim: A university is a place where men of principle outnumber men of honor.

May's Law: The quality of the correlation is inversely proportional to the density of the control (the fewer the facts, the smoother the curves).

Maugham's Thought: Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Matz's warning: Beware of the physician who is great at getting out of trouble.

Matsch's Maxim: A fool in a high station is like a man on the top of a small mountain: everything appears small to him and he appears small to everybody.

Matsch's Law: It is better to have a horrible ending than to have horrors without end.

Martin's Minimax Maxim: Everyone knows that the name of the game is to let the other guy have all of the little tats and to keep all of the big tits for yourself.

Martin's Law of Communication: The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communication between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding.

Martin's Law of Committees: All committee reports conclude that "it is not prudent to change the policy (or procedure, or organization, or whatever) at this time." Martin's Exclusion: Committee reports dealing with wages, salaries, fringe benefits, facilities, computers, employee parking, libraries, coffee breaks, secretarial support, etc., always call for dramatic expenditure increases.

Martin's Laws of Academia:
The faculty expands its activity to fit whatever space is available, so that more space is always required.
Faculty purchases of equipment and supplies always increase to match the funds available, so these funds are never adequate.
The professional quality of the faculty tends to be inversely proportional to the importance it attaches to space and equipment.

Martin-Berthelot Principle: Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest amount of hot air.

Dean Martin's Definition of Drunkenness: You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.

Martha's Maxim (and see Olum's Observation and Farrow's Finding): If God had meant for us to travel tourist class, He would have made us narrower.

Marshall's Universal Laws of Perpetual Perceptual Obfuscation:
Nobody perceives anything with total accuracy.
No two people perceive the same thing identically.
Few perceive what difference it makes -- or care.

Marshall's Generalized Iceberg Theorem: Seven-eighths of everything can't be seen.

Manly's Maxim: Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

Truth 5.1 of Management: Organizations always have too many managers.

Truths of Management:

Think before you act; it's not your money.
All good management is the expression of one great idea.
No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.
Cash in must exceed cash out.
Management capability is always less than the organization actually needs.
Either an executive can do his job or he can't.
If sophisticated calculations are needed to justify an action, don't do it.
If you are doing something wrong, you will do it badly.
If you are attempting the impossible, you will fail.
The easiest way of making money is to stop losing it.

The first Myth of Management: It exists.

Malloy's Maxim: The fact that monkeys have hands should give us pause.

Malinowski's Law: Looking from far above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic.

Malek's Law: Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.

Maier's Law: If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of. Corollaries:
The bigger the theory, the better.
The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory. (Compensation Corollary)

Rev. Mahaffy's Observation: There's no such thing as a large whiskey.

Madison's Question: If you have to travel on a Titanic, why not go first-class?

Lyon's Law of Hesitation: He who hesitates is last.

Lynch's Law: When the going gets tough, everybody leaves.

Lyall's Fundamental Observation: The most important leg of a three legged stool is the one that's missing.

Lyall's Conjecture: If a computer cable has one end, then it has another.

Luten's Laws:
When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity: for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another week when your boss is away and you get twice as much done.
It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off the ground.

Lucy's Law: The alternative to getting old is depressing.

Luce's Law: No good deed goes unpunished.

Lubin's Law: If another scientist thought your research was more important than his, he would drop what he is doing and do what you are doing.

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug.

Lowrey's Law of Expertise: Just when you get really good at something, you don't need to do it any more.

Lowrey's Law: If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

Law of the Lost Inch: In designing any type of construction, no overall dimension can be totalled correctly after 4:40 p.m. on Friday.
Corollaries:
Under the same conditions, if any minor dimensions are given to sixteenths of an inch, they cannot be totalled at all.
The correct total will become self-evident at 9:01 a.m. on Monday.

Los Angeles Dodgers Law: Wait till last year.

Long's Notes:

Always store beer in a dark place.
Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win.
Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.
If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another -- but which one? Differences are crucial.
A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.
Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
A generation which ignores history has no past -- and no future.
A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
Small change can often be found under seat cushions.
History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired.
Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated out of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing -- with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for second and third place.
It's better to copulate than never.
Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.
It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.
Never appeal to a man's "better nature". He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.
Avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry.
An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.
A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe.
Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin; the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. It says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.
Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Always tell her she is beautiful, especially if she is not.
In a family argument, if it turns out you are right, apologize at once.
To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.
Does history record any case in which the majority was right?
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss.
Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
Tilting at windmills hurts you more than the windmills.
Yield to temptation; it may not pass your way again.
Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it's none of my business, but . . . " is to place a period after the word "but". Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.
A skunk is better company than a person who prides himself on being "frank".
Natural laws have no pity.
You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting.
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get.
Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament -- it is possible to be both. How? By never taking an unnecessary chance and by minimizing risks you can't avoid. This permits you to play out the game happily, untroubled by the certainty of the outcome.
"I came, I saw, SHE conquered." (The original Latin seems to have been garbled.)
A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.
Don't try to have the last word. You might get it.

(F)law of Long-Range Planning: The longer ahead you plan a special event, and the more special it is, the more likely it is to go wrong.