While I was doing some research on quotes about programming I came across this list of funny laws that were too good not to share.

Anthony’s Law of Force:

Don’t force it; get a larger hammer.

Anthony’s Law of the Workshop:

Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner of the workshop.

Corollary:

On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike your toes.

Arnold’s Laws of Documentation:

1. If it should exist, it doesn’t.
2. If it does exist, it’s out of date.
3. Only documentation for useless programs transcends the first two laws.

Arthur’s Laws of Love:

1. People to whom you are attracted invariably think you remind them of someone else.
2. The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of yourself in person.

Baker’s First Law of Federal Geometry:

A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides by governors.

Baruch’s Observation:

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Beifeld’s Principle:

The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is already in the company of: (1) a date; (2) his wife; (3) a better looking and richer male friend.

Bennett’s Laws of Horticulture:

1. Houses are for people to live in.
2. Gardens are for plants to live in.
3. There is no such thing as a houseplant.

Blore’s Razor:

Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.

Boling’s postulate:

If you’re feeling good, don’t worry. You’ll get over it.

Bolub’s Fourth Law of Computerdom:

Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress.

Bombeck’s Rule of Medicine:

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

Boren’s Laws:

1. When in charge, ponder.
2. When in trouble, delegate.
3. When in doubt, mumble.

Bradley’s Bromide:

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee — that will do them in.

Brady’s First Law of Problem Solving:

When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, “How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?”

Brook’s Law:

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Brooke’s Law:

Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.

Bucy’s Law:

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Cahn’s Axiom:

When all else fails, read the instructions.

Chisolm’s First Corollary to Murphy’s Second Law:

When things just can’t possibly get any worse, they will.

Churchill’s Commentary:

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Colvard’s Logical Premises:

All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it won’t.

Colvard’s Unconscionable Commentary:

This is especially true when dealing with someone you’re attracted to.

Grelb’s Commentary

Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.

Conway’s Law:

1. In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on.
2. This person must be fired.

Drew’s Law of Highway Biology:

The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front of your eyes.

Ducharme’s Axiom:

If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize yourself as part of the problem.

Ducharme’s Precept:

Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.

Eagleson’s Law:

Any code of your own that you haven’t looked at for six or more months, might as well have been written by someone else.

Ehrman’s Commentary:

1. Things will get worse before they get better.
2. Who said things would get better?

Emerson’s Law of Contrariness:

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.

Epperson’s law:

When a man says it’s a silly, childish game, it’s probably something his wife can beat him at.

Fifth Law of Applied Terror:

If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.

Corollary:

If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.

First Law of Procrastination:

Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed the deadline).

Fifth Law of Procrastination:

Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do.

Finagle’s Creed:

Science is true. Don’t be misled by facts.

Finagle’s First Law:

If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle’s Second Law:

No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory.

Finagle’s Third Law:

In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.

Corollaries:

1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don’t want to hear, will see it immediately.

Finagle’s Fourth Law:

Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.

First Law of Bicycling:

No matter which way you ride, it’s uphill and against the wind.

First Law of Socio-Genetics:

Celibacy is not hereditary.

Fudd’s First Law of Opposition:

Push something hard enough and it will fall over.

Gerrold’s Laws of Infernal Dynamics:

1. An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction.
2. An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
3. The energy required to change either one of these states will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so much as to make the task totally impossible.

Ginsberg’s Theorem:

1. You can’t win.
2. You can’t break even.
3. You can’t even quit the game.

Freeman’s Commentary on Ginsberg’s theorem:

Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg’s Theorem. To wit:

1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.

Goldenstern’s Rules:

1. Always hire a rich attorney
2. Never buy from a rich salesman.

Gordon’s first law:

If a research project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well.

Hall’s Laws of Politics:

1. The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
2. Citizens want honest politicians until they want something fixed.
3. Constituency drives out consistency

Hanson’s Treatment of Time:

There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days before Saturday.

Harrisberger’s Fourth Law of the Lab:

Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.

Hartley’s Second Law:

Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.

Hlade’s Law:

If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person — they will find an easier way to do it.

Hofstadter’s Law:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.

Horngren’s Observation:

Among economists, the real world is often a special case.

Iles’s Law:

There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it. Neither will Iles.

Issawi’s Laws of Progress:

1. The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily worse.
2. The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.

Jacquin’s Postulate on Democratic Government:

No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

Jenkinson’s Law:

It won’t work.

Johnson’s First Law:

When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the most inconvenient possible time.

Jone’s Law:

The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.

Jone’s Motto:

Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Jones’s First Law:

Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress — in direct proportion to the importance of their original contribution.

Katz’ Law:

Man and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted.

Kinkler’s First Law:

Responsibility always exceeds authority.

Kinkler’s Second Law:

All the easy problems have been solved.

Law of Probable Dispersal:

Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.

Law of Selective Gravity:

An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Jenning’s Corollary:

The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

Law of the Perversity of Nature:

You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.

Lazlo’s Chinese Relativity Axiom:

No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats — approximately one billion Chinese couldn’t care less.

Lowery’s Law:

If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

Lubarsky’s Law of Cybernetic Entomology:

There’s always one more bug.

Maier’s Law:

If the facts don’t conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.

Corollaries:

1. The bigger the theory, the better.
2. 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.

Main’s Law:

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Maintainer’s Motto:

If we can’t fix it, it ain’t broke.

Mollison’s Bureaucracy Hypothesis:

If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented it wasn’t worth doing.

Mosher’s Law of Software Engineering:

Don’t worry if it doesn’t work right. If everything did, you’d be out of a job.

Murphy’s Law of Research:

Enough research will tend to support your theory.

Naeser’s Law:

You can make it foolproof, but you can’t make it damnfoolproof.

Newton’s Little-Known Seventh Law:

A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.

Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:

The first 90% of the task takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% takes the other 90%.

O’Toole’s Commentary on Murphy’s Law:

Murphy was an optimist.

Oliver’s Law:

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

The First Commandment for Technicians:

Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most untechnician-like manner.

The Seventh Commandments for Technicians

Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in other ways.

One Page Principle:

A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5×11 inch paper cannot be understood.

Osborn’s Law:

Variables won’t; constants aren’t.

Ozman’s Laws:

1. If someone says he will do something “without fail,” he won’t.
2. The more people talk on the phone, the less money they make.
3. People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn’t.
4. Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.

Pardo’s First Postulate:

Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

Arnold’s Addendum:

Everything else causes cancer in rats.

Paul’s Law:

In America, it’s not how much an item costs, it’s how much you save.

Paul’s Law:

You can’t fall off the floor.

Preudhomme’s Law of Window Cleaning:

It’s on the other side.

Quigley’s Law:

Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will attempt to use it.

Reisner’s Rule of Conceptual Inertia:

If you think big enough, you’ll never have to do it.

Rocky’s Lemma of Innovation Prevention:

Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal.

Rudin’s Law:

If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it every time.

Rule of Feline Frustration:

When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.

Rule of the Great:

When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.

Rules for driving in New York:

1. Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
2. You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers on.
3. A red light means the next six cars may go through the intersection.

Sattinger’s Law:

It works better if you plug it in.

Seleznick’s Theory of Holistic Medicine:

Ice cream cures all ills.

Slick’s Three Laws of the Universe:

1. Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check.
2. A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
3. There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is attracted to dark objects.

Spark’s Sixth Rule for Managers:

If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question back at him.

Speer’s 1st Law of Proofreading:

The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it.

Steele’s Plagiarism of Somebody Else’s Philosophy:

Everybody should believe in something — I believe I’ll have another drink.

Steinbach’s Guideline for Systems Programming:

Never test for an error condition you don’t know how to handle.

Swipple’s Rule of Order:

He who shouts the loudest has the floor.

The Fifth Rule:

You have taken yourself too seriously.

The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:

You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.

The Sixth Commandment of Frisbee:

The greatest single aid to distance is for the disc to be going in a direction you did not want.

The Third Law of Photography:

If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of the dark leaks out.

The Three Laws of Thermodynamics:

1. You can’t get anything without working for it.
2. The most you can accomplish by working is to break even.
3. You can only break even at absolute zero.

Tussman’s Law:

Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.

Uncle Ed’s Rule of Thumb:

Never use your thumb for a rule. You’ll either hit it with a hammer or get a splinter in it.

Vail’s Second Axiom:

The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the amount of work already completed.

Velilind’s Laws of Experimentation:

1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once.
2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points.

Weiler’s Law:

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.

Weinberg’s First Law:

Progress is made on alternate Fridays.

Weinberg’s Principle:

An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

Weinberg’s Second Law:

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

Westheimer’s Discovery:

A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library.

Wethern’s Law:

Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.

Williams and Holland’s Law:

If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods.

Zymurgy’s Law of Volunteer Labor:

People are always available for work in the past tense.

Tagged: Comedy, funny laws, Quotes