Jokes and Puns: Lighten up your day!

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 doing nothing but reporting on the nothing you are doing.

Cohen's Laws of Politics:

Law of Alienation: Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.
Law of Ambition: At any one time, thousands of borough councilmen, school board members, attorneys, and businessmen -- as well as congressmen, senators, and governors -- are dreaming of the White House, but few, if any of them, will make it.
Law of Attraction: Power attracts people but it cannot hold them.
Law of Competition: The more qualified candidates who are available, the more likely the compromise will be on the candidate whose main qualification is a nonthreatening incompetence.
Law of Inside Dope: There are many inside dopes in politics and government.
Law of Lawmaking: Those who express random thoughts to legislative committees are often surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
Law of Permanence: Political power is as permanent as today's newspaper. Ten years from now, few will know or care who the most powerful man in any state was today.
Law of Secrecy: The best way to publicize a governmental or political action is to attempt to hide it.
Law of Wealth: Victory goes to the candidate with the most accumulated or contributed wealth who has the financial resources to convince the middle class and poor that he will be on their side.
Law of Wisdom: Wisdom is considered a sign of weakness by the powerful because a wise man can lead without power but only a powerful man can lead without wisdom.

Cohen's Law: What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts -- not the facts themselves.

Clyde's Law: If you have something to do, and you put it off long enough, chances are someone else will do it for you.

Clopton's Law: For every credibility gap there is a gullibility fill.

Cleveland's Highway Law: Highways in the worst need of repair naturally have low traffic counts, which results in low priority for repair work.

Clark's Law: It's always darkest just before the lights go out.

Clark's First Law of Relativity: No matter how often you trade dinner or other invitations with in-laws, you will lose a small fortune in the exchange.
Corollary: Don't try it: you cannot drink enough of your in-laws' booze to get even before your liver fails.

Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas: Every revolutionary idea -- in Science, Politics, Art or Whatever -- evokes three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the three phrases:
"It is completely impossible -- don't waste my time."
"It is possible, but it is not worth doing."
"I said it was a good idea all along."

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Clarke's Second Law: The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

Corollary (Asimov): When the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists, and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion -- the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, right.

Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Ciardi's Poetry Law: Whenever in time, and wherever in the universe, any man speaks or writes in any detail about the technical management of a poem, the resulting irascibility of the reader's response is a constant.

Churchill's Commentary on Man: Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on as though nothing has happened.

The First Discovery of Christmas Morning: Batteries not included.

Chisholm's First Law and Corollary: see Murphy's Third and Fifth Laws.
Chisholm's Second Law: When things are going well, something will go wrong.
Corollaries:
When things just can't get any worse, they will.
Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.
Chisholm's Third Law: Proposals, as understood by the proposer, will be judged otherwise by others.
Corollaries:
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.
If you do something which you are sure will meet with everyone's approval, somebody won't like it.
Procedures devised to implement the purpose won't quite work.
No matter how long or how many times you explain, no one is listening.

Chili Cook's Secret: If your next pot of chili tastes better, it probably is because of something left out, rather than added.

Cheops's Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

Checkbook Balancer's Law: In matters of dispute, the bank's balance is always smaller than yours.

Law of Character and Appearance: People don't change; they only become more so.

Cavanaugh's Postulate: All kookies are not in a jar.

Cartoon Laws:

Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation. Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over.
Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly. Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the stooge's surcease.
Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter. Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout- perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.
The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken. Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it inevitably unsuccessful.
All principles of gravity are negated by fear. Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel them directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or an adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole. The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.
As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once. This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled. A 'wacky' character has the option of self- replication only at manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.
Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot. This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generation, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not of science.
Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent. Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify.

Carson's Law It's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick.

Cannon's Comment: If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

Cannon's Cogent Comment: The leak in the roof is never in the same location as the drip.

Canada Bill Jones's Motto: It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Canada Bill Jones's Supplement: A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.

Campbell's Law: Nature abhors a vacuous experimenter.

Camp's Law: A coup that is known in advance is a coup that does not take place.

John Cameron's Law: No matter how many times you've had it, if it's offered, take it, because it'll never be quite the same again.

Calkin's Law of Menu Language: The number of adjectives and verbs that are added to the description of a menu item is in inverse proportion to the quality of the resulting dish.

Cahn's Axiom (Allen's Axiom): When all else fails, read the instructions.

Bye's Second Law of Model Railroading: The desire for modeling a prototype is inversely proportional to the decline of the prototype.

Bye's First Law of Model Railroading: Anytime you wish to demonstrate something, the number of faults is proportional to the number of viewers.

Butler's Law of Progress: All progress is based on a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Bustlin' Billy's Bogus Beliefs:

The organization of any program reflects the organization of the people who develop it.
There is no such thing as a "dirty capitalist", only a capitalist.
Anything is possible, but nothing is easy.
Capitalism can exist in one of only two states -- welfare or warfare.
I'd rather go whoring than warring.
History proves nothing.
There is nothing so unbecoming on the beach as a wet kilt.
A little humility is arrogance.
A lot of what appears to be progress is just so much technological rococo.

Burns's Balance: If the assumptions are wrong, the conclusions aren't likely to be very good.

Bureaucratic Cop-Out: You should have seen it when *I* got it.

Bunuel's Law: Overdoing things is harmful in all cases, even when it comes to efficiency.

Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Buchwald's Law: As the economy gets better, everything else gets worse.

Bruce-Briggs's Law of Traffic: At any level of traffic, any delay is intolerable.

(Tony) Brown's Law of Business Success: Our customer's paperwork is profit. Our own paperwork is loss.

(Sam) Brown's Law: Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.

(Jerry) Brown's Law: Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases.

Brooks's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Brontosaurus Principle: Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them in relation to their environment and to their own physiology; when this occurs, they are an endangered species.

Broder's Law: Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.

Brien's First Law: At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.

First Law of Bridge: It's always the partner's fault.

Branch's First Law of Crisis: The spirit of public service will rise, and the bureaucracy will multiply itself much faster, in time of grave national concern.

Boyle's Laws:
When things are going well, someone will inevitably experiment detrimentally.
The deficiency will never show itself during the dry runs.
Information travels more surely to those with a lesser need to know.
An original idea can never emerge from committee in the original.
When the product is destined to fail, the delivery system will perform perfectly.
The crucial memorandum will be snared in the out-basket by the paper clip of the overlying correspondence and go to file.
Success can be insured only by devising a defense against failure of the contingency plan.
Performance is directly affected by the perversity of inanimate objects.
If not controlled, work will flow to the competent man until he submerges.
The lagging activity in a project will invariably be found in the area where the highest overtime rates lie waiting.
Talent in staff work or sales will recurringly be interpreted as managerial ability.
The "think positive" leader tends to listen to his subordinates' premonitions only during the postmortems.
Clearly stated instructions will consistently produce multiple interpretations.
On successive charts of the same organization the number of boxes will never decrease.

Boultbee's Criterion: If the converse of a statement is absurd, the original statement is an insult to the intelligence and should never have been said.

Boston's Irreversible Law of Clutter: In any household, junk accumulates to fill the space available for its storage.

Borstelmann's Rule: If everything seems to be coming your way, you're probably in the wrong lane.

Borkowski's Law: You can't guard against the arbitrary.

Boren's Laws of the Bureaucracy:
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
When in charge, ponder.

Boozer's Revision: A bird in the hand is dead.

Booker's Law: An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.

Boob's Law: You always find something the last place you look.

Bombeck's Rule of Medicine: Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

Bolton's Law of Ascending Budgets: Under current practices, both expenditures and revenues rise to meet each other, no matter which one may be in excess.

Boling's Postulate: If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.

Bok's Law: If you think education is expensive -- try ignorance.

Blanchard's Newspaper Obituary Law: If you want your name spelled wrong, die.

Blaauw's Law: Established technology tends to persist in spite of new technology.

Billings's Law: Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.

Berson's Corollary of Inverse Distances: The farther away from the entrance that you have to park, the closer the space vacated by the car that pulls away as you walk up to the door.

Berra's Law: You can observe a lot just by watching.

Berkeley's Laws:

The world is more complicated than most of our theories make it out to be.
Ignorance is no excuse.
Most problems have either many answers or no answer. Only a few problems have a single answer.
An answer may be wrong, right, both, or neither. Most answers are partly right and partly wrong.
A chain of reasoning is no stronger than its weakest link.
A statement may be true independently of illogical reasoning.
Most general statements are false, including this one.
An exception TESTS a rule; it NEVER PROVES it.
The moment you have worked out an answer, start checking it -- it probably isn't right.
If there is an opportunity to make a mistake, sooner or later the mistake will be made.
Being sure mistakes will occur is a good frame of mind for catching them.
Check the answer you have worked out once more -- before you tell it to anybody.
Estimating a figure may be enough to catch an error.
Figures calculated in a rush are very hot; they should be allowed to cool off a little before being used; thus we will have a reasonable time to think about the figures and catch mistakes.
A great many problems do not have accurate answers, but do have approximate answers, from which sensible decisions can be made.

Benchley's Law: Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

Belle's Constant: The ratio of time involved in work to time available for work is usually about 0.6.

Becker's Law: It is much harder to find a job than to keep one.

Baxter's First Law: Government intervention in the free market always leads to a lower national standard of living.
Baxter's Second Law: The adoption of fractional gold reserves in a currency system always leads to depreciation, devaluation, demonetization and, ultimately, to complete destruction of that currency.
Baxter's Third Law: In a free market good money always drives bad money out of circulation.

Forthoffer's Cynical Summary of Barzun's Laws:
That which has not yet been taught directly can never be taught directly.
If at first you don't succeed, you will never succeed.

Baruch's Rule for Determining Old Age: Old age is always fifteen years older than I am.

Bartz's Law of Hokey Horsepuckery: The more ridiculous a belief system, the higher the probability of its success.

Barth's Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't.

Barr's Comment on Domestic Tranquility: On a beautiful day like this it's hard to believe anyone can be unhappy -- but we'll work on it.

Barrett's Laws of Driving:
The vehicle in front of you is traveling slower than you are.
This lane ends in 500 feet.