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

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.

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.

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

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Any running program is obsolete.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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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."

The Ultimate Law: All general statements are false.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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).

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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".

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

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

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

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

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