Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Social innovations tend to the level of minimum tolerable well-being.
When all else fails, read the instructions.
When in doubt, mumble.
The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal increases as the deadline approaches.
If an experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
It's morally wrong to allow naive end users to keep their money.
When all else fails, read the instructions.
Nothing is ever a complete failure; it can always serve as a bad example.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
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 reporting on the nothing you are doing.
In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.
Experiments should be reproducible. They should all fail in the same way.
An experiment may be considered a success if no more than half of your data must be discarded to obtain correspondence with your theory.
The amount of work done varies inversely with the amount of time spent in the office.
There are two sides to every argument, unless a person is personally involved, in which case there is only one.
The higher the "higher-ups" are who've come to see your demo, the lower your chances are of giving a successful one.
There is always one item on the screen menu that is mislabeled and should read "ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE".
Virtue is its own punishment.
In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion.
A bad sector disk error occurs only after you've done several hours of work without performing a backup.
No matter how large and standardized the marketplace is, IBM can redefine it.
A closed mouth gathers no feet.
History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other.
Blessed is the end user who expects nothing, for he/she will not be disappointed.
COROLLARY
Every major social movement is based on the negation of one of the above, to wit:
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.
Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
If the shoe fits, it's ugly.
If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing well.
There is an exception to all laws.
Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
The amount of expertise varies in inverse proportion to the number of statements understood by the general public.
The probability of a given event occurring is inversely proportional to its desirability.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Your "IBM PC-compatible" computer grows more incompatible with every passing moment.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
The first myth of management is that it exists.
Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.
Don't take life too seriously; you won't get out of it alive.
It won't work.
Toothache tends to start on Saturday night.
All laws are basically false.
A program generator creates programs that are more "buggy" than the program generator.
Everybody lies; but it doesn't matter, since nobody listens.
When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.
The one day you'd sell you soul for something, souls are a glut.
The quality of correlation is inverely proportional to the density of control. (The fewer the data points, the smoother the curves.)
There is always an easy answer to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong.
There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
Things get worse under pressure.
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on.
An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.
No matter where you are, there you are.
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
Variables won't, constants aren't.
Murphy was an optimist.
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
The components you have will expand to fill the available space.
The solution to a problem changes the problem.
In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence.
You cannot determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
Anything that begins well will end badly. (Note: The converse of Pudder's law is not true.)
Inside every complex and unworkable program is a useful routine struggling to be free.
Judgement comes from experience; experience comes from poor judgement.
In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative courses of action, people tend to choose the worst possible course.
When working toward the solution of a problem it always helps you to know the answer.
Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish yourself as an expert.
It works better if you plug it in.
People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either one being made.
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
Everything goes wrong at once.
In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct beyond all need of checking contain the errors.
Corollary 1: No one you ask for help will see the error either.
Corollary 2: Any nagging intruder, who stops by with unsought advice, will spot it immediately.
If it happens, it must be possible.
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do the work.
An expert is a person who avoids the smallo the grand fallacy.
If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
The obvious answer is always overlooked.
A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants.
As soon as a still-tlanation.
Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a larger can.
The next best thing to doing something smart is not doing something stupid.
Be a lawyer with you, and bring another lawyer to watch him.
Dealing with the government is like kicking a 300-pound sponge.
The bigger they are The harder they hit.
Not all our artists are playing a joke on the public. Some are genuinely mad.
Just because it's hard Doesn't mean it's worth the effort.
The fastest way to get something done is to determine that it isn't worth doing
Troubleshooting a computer over the telephone is like having sex through a hole in a board fence. It can be done but it is neither EASY nor PLEASANT.
A statement of absolute functional equivalence made in bold print followed by several pages of qualifications in fine.
think you're going in a straight line but always end up going full circle.
A future product release date does NOT say when a product will be introduced. All it says it that you don't have a chance in HELL of seeing it before that time.
begin fighting over the best way to achieve it.
WHAT FUN IS IT TO BE AN EXPERT IF YOU MAKE YOURSELF EASY TO UNDERSTAND?
Thinly sliced cabbage.
Cartoon Laws Contributed by Trevor Paquette & Lt. Justin D. Baldwin Cartoon Law I. 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. Cartoon Law II. 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. Cartoon Law III. 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. Cartoon Law IV. 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. Cartoon Law V. 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. Cartoon Law VI. 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. Cartoon Law VII. 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. Cartoon Law VIII. 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. Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container. Cartoon Law IX. For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance. This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead.