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

Horowitz's Rule: A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working 20 years.

Howard's First Law of Theater: Use it.

Howe's Law: Every man has a scheme that will not work.

Hull's Theorem: The combined pull of several patrons is the sum of their separate pulls multiplied by the number of patrons.

Hull's Warning: Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.

IBM Pollyanna Principle: Machines should work. People should think.

Idea Formula: One man's brain plus one other will produce about one half as many ideas as one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as many.

The Ike Tautology: Things are more like they are now than they have ever been before.
Corollary: Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Iles's Law: There is an easier way to do it.
Corollaries:
When looking directly at the easier way, especially for long periods, you will not see it.
Neither will Iles.

Imhoff's Law: The organization of any bureaucracy is very much like a septic tank -- the REALLY big chunks always rise to the top.

Index of Development: The degree of a country's development is measured by the ratio of the price of an automobile to the cost of a haircut. The lower the ratio, the higher the degree of development.

Law of the Individual: Nobody really cares or understands what anyone else is doing.

Laws of Institutional Food:
Everything is cold except what should be.
Everything, including the corn flakes, is greasy.

Law of Institutions: The opulence of the front office decor varies inversely with the fundamental solvency of the firm.

Iron Law of Distribution: Them what has -- gets.
Wakefield's Refutation of the Iron Law of Distribution: Them what gets -- has.

Issawi's Law of Aggression: At any given moment, a society contains a certain amount of accumulated and accruing aggressiveness. If more than 21 years elapse without this aggressiveness being directed outward, in a popular war against other countries, it turns inward, in social unrest, civil disturbances, and political disruption.

Issawi's Laws of Committo-Dynamics:
Comitas comitatum, omnia comitas.
The less you enjoy serving on committees, the more likely you are to be pressed to do so.

Issawi's Law of the Conservation of Evil: The total amount of evil in any system remains constant. Hence, any diminution in one direction -- for instance, a reduction in poverty or unemployment -- is accompanied by an increase in another, e.g., crime or air pollution.

Issawi's Law of Consumption Patterns: Other people's patterns of expenditure and consumption are highly irrational and slightly immoral.

Issawi's Law of Cynics: Cynics are right nine times out of ten; what undoes them is their belief that they are right ten times out of ten.

Issawi's Law of Dogmatism: When we call others dogmatic, what we really object to is their holding dogmas that are different from our own.

Issawi's Law of Estimation of Error: Experts in advanced countries underestimate by a factor of 2 to 4 the ability of people in underdeveloped countries to do anything technical.

Issawi's Law of Frustration: One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.

Issawi's Laws of Progress:

The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily worse. The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points. The Dialectics of Progress: Direct action produces direct reaction. The Pace of Progress: Society is a mule, not a car . . . If pressed too hard, it will kick and throw off its rider.

Issawi's Law of the Social Sciences: By the time a social science theory is formulated in such a way that it can be tested, changing circumstances have already made it obsolete.

Issawi's Observation on the Consumption of Paper: Each system has its own way of consuming vast amounts of paper: in socialist societies by filling large forms in quadruplicate, in capitalist societies by putting up huge posters and wrapping every article in four layers of cardboard.

First Postulate of Isomorphism: Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.

Italian Proverb: She who is silent consents.

Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Governments: No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

Jake's Law: Anything hit with a big enough hammer will fall apart.

Jaroslovsky's Law: The distance you have to park from your apartment increases in proportion to the weight of packages you are carrying.

Jay's Laws of Leadership:
Changing things is central to leadership, and changing them before anyone else is creativity.
To build something that endures, it is of the greatest important to have a long tenure in office -- to rule for many years. You can achieve a quick success in a year or two, but nearly all of the great tycoons have continued their building much longer.

Jenkinson's Law: It won't work.

Jinny's Law: There is no such thing as a short beer. (As in, "I'm going to stop off at Joe's for a short beer before on the way home.")

John's Axiom: When your opponent is down, kick him.

John's Collateral Corollary: In order to get a loan you must first prove you don't need it.

Johnson's First Law: When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the most inconvenient possible time.

Johnson's Second Law: If, in the course of several months, only three worthwhile social events take place, they will all fall on the same evening.

Johnson's Third Law: If you miss one issue of any magazine, it will be the issue containing the article, story, or installment you were most anxious to read.
Corollary: All of your friends either missed it, lost it, or threw it out.

Johnson's First Law of Auto Repair: Any tool dropped while repairing an automobile will roll under the car to the vehicle's exact geographic center.

Johnson-Laird's Law: Toothache tends to start on Saturday night.

Jones's Law: The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on.

Jones's Motto: Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
McClaughry's Codicil on Jones's Motto: To make an enemy, do someone a favor.

Jones's Principle: Needs are a function of what other people have.

Juhani's Law: The compromise will always be more expensive than either of the suggestions it's compromising.

Kafka's Law: In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

Kamin's First Law: All currencies will decrease in value and purchasing power over the long term, unless they are freely and fully convertable into gold and that gold is traded freely without restrictions of any kind.

Kamin's Second Law: Threat of capital controls accelerates marginal capital outflows.

Kamin's Third Law: Combined total taxation from all levels of government will always increase (until the government is replaced by war or revolution).

Kamin's Fourth Law: Government inflation is always worse than statistics indicate: central bankers are biased toward inflation when the money unit is non-convertible, and without gold or silver backing.

Kamin's Fifth Law: Purchasing power of currency is always lost far more rapidly than ever regained. (Those who expect even fluctuations in both directions play a losing game.)

Kamin's Sixth Law: When attempting to predict and forecast macro-economic moves or economic legislation by a politician, never be misled by what he says; instead watch what he does.

Kamin's Seventh Law: Politicians will always inflate when given the opportunity.

Kaplan's Law of the Instrument: Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.

Katz's Law: Men and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted.

Katz's Maxims:

Where are the calculations that go with the calculated risk?
Inventing is easy for staff outfits. Stating a problem is much harder. Instead of stating problems, people like to pass out half- accurate statements together with half-available solutions which they can't finish and which they want you to finish.
Every organization is self-perpetuating. Don't ever ask an outfit to justify itself, or you'll be covered with facts, figures, and fancy. The criterion should rather be, "What will happen if the outfit stops doing what it's doing?" The value of an organization is more easily determined this way.
Try to find out who's doing the work, not who's writing about it, controlling it, or summarizing it.
Watch out for formal briefings; they often produce an avalanche (a high-level snow job of massive and overwhelming proportions).
The difficulty of the coordination task often blinds one to the fact that a fully coordinated piece of paper is not supposed to be either the major or the final product of the organization, but it often turns out that way.
Most organizations can't hold more than one idea at a time. Thus complementary ideas are always regarded as competetive. Further, like a quantized pendulum, an organization can jump from one extreme to the other, without ever going through the middle.
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is it being done, or is it something to be done? Reports are now written in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for novel uses of "contractor grammar", defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future.

Kelley's Law: Last guys don't finish nice.

Kelly's Law: An executive will always return to work from lunch early if no one takes him.

Kennedy's Law: Excessive official restraints on information are inevitably self-defeating and productive of headaches for the officials concerned.

Kent's Law: The only way a reporter should look at a politician is down.