Cable's Law of Commercial Aircraft: If there is one seat on an airplane with a defective seatback, it will be the seat in front of you.

Cade's Law of Budgeting: The larger the budget, the less effectively the funds are allocated.

Cafeteria Law: The item you had your eye on the minute you walked in will be taken by the person in front of you!

Caine's Observation on Civics and Psychology: Everybody's upset about something.

Callaway's Lament: Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check.

Calvin Coolidge's Comment: You don' have to explain something you never said.

Cameron's First Law: An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
 Second Law: If you don't do anything, you can't do anything wrong.

Cameron's Law: An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.

Campbell's Law: The less you do, the less can go wrong. 
Maxim: Hell is the place where everything tests perfectly and nothing works. 
Laws of Automotive Repair: 1. If you can get to the faulty part, you don't have the tool to take it off. 
     2. If you can get the part off, the parts house will have it back-ordered. 
     3. If it's in stock, it didn't need replacing in the first place.

Camus's Law: Those who write clearly have readers. Those who write obscurely have commentators.

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

Cannon's Canon: Experience is what causes you to make new mistakes instead of old ones.

Capp's Law: The closest you can get to your youth is to start repeating your follies.

Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool MOM.

Carlton's Comment: Expertise is the knack of recognizing the obvious.

Carlyle's Mystery Key Theory: On a key ring with multiple keys, there will always be one key that does not open anything.

Carol's Principle of Weight Loss: The first outfits you can get back into are those you never really liked.

Carson's Laws of Comedy: 1. If they buy the premise, they'll buy the bit. 
             2. Don't do more than three jokes on the same premise. 
Second Law of Driving: If you slow down to look for an address, someone will drive up behind you and tailgate.

Carter's Computer Conundrum: The backup disk will not contain the data you just lost.

Casey's Theory of Light: The most difficult bulb to replace burns out most frequently.

Cassio's Law of Business Travel: After paying $15 for the hotel breakfast, you will find a deli next door offering the same thing as a $2.99 breakfast special.

Chandler's Law: The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.

Chaney's Law: Entropy requires no maintenance.

Chapman's Committee Rules: 1. Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner. 
     2. Don't say anything until the meeting is half over. 
     3. Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating others. 
     4. When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed. 
       5. Be the first to move for adjournment;  this will make you popular - it's what everyone is waiting for.
First Law: Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
Second Law: If you can't get your work done in the first 24 hours, work nights.

Charles Osgood's Axiom: Nobody thinks they make too much money.

Chasen's First Law of Sewing: If you need four similar buttons, you will find three. 
  Third Law: A container of small pins falls only when its cover is off.

Chason's Rule of Retail: Any economically priced quality product eventually becomes overpriced.

Chaussee's Conundrum: Where everyone is wrong, everyone is right.

Cheit's Lament: If you help a friend in need, that person is sure to remember you - the next time he's in need.

Chekhov's Law: If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.

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

Chesterton on Religion: The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

Chisholm's Laws: 1. When things are going well, something will go wrong. Corollaries: a. When things just can't get worse, they will. b. Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something. 
3. Proposals, as understood by the proposer, will be judged otherwise by others. Corollaries: a. If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will. b. If you do something which you are sure will meet with everybody's approval, somebody won't like it. c. Procedures devised to implement the purpose won't quite work.

Chris' Comment: You always have to give up something you want for something you want more.

Christensen's Law: When a man's wife learns to understand him, she usually stops listening to him.

Christie-Davies' Theorem: If your facts are wrong but your logic is perfect, then your conclusions are inevitable false. Therefore, by making mistakes in your logic, you have at least a random chance of coming to a correct conclusion.

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. 
Comment for the Millennium: Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Clarke's Laws: 1. 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. 
     2. The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. 
     3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. 
       It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value. 
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: 
     1. "It is impossible - don't waste my time." 
     2. "It is possible, but it is not worth doing." 
     3. "I said it was a good idea all along."

Cleve's Conundrum: Those who become part of a larger picture don't appear smaller.

Cliff's Law: Never stand between a dog and a hydrant.

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

Coblitz's Law: A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members.

Cock's Comment: A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and the quietly strangled.

Cochrane's Aphorism: Before ordering a test, decide what you will do if the results are 1) positive, or 2) negative. If both your answers are the same, don't take the test.

Cohen's Laws: 1. What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing an the facts - not the facts themselves. 
2. People are divided into two groups - the righteous and the unrighteous - and the righteous do the dividing.

Cohn's Laws: 1. In any bureaucracy, paperwork increases as you spend more and more time reporting on the less and less you are doing. 
2. In a bureaucracy, stability is achieved when you spend all of your time reporting on the nothing you are doing.

Coit-Murphy's Statement on the Power of Negative Thinking: It is impossible for an optimist to be pleasantly surprised.

Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.

Collins's Conference Principle: The speaker with the most monotonous voice speaks after the big meal.

Colridge's Law: Extremes meet.

Colvard's Logical Premises: All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it won't.

Commoner's Laws of Ecology: 1. Nothing ever goes away. 
                 2. Nothing goes ever away.

Connor's First Law: There is only one first time. 
Second Law: If something is confidential, it will be left in the copier machine.

Connor's Second Law: If something is confidential, it will be left in the copier machine.

Conrad Hilton's One (and Only) Certainty: It's better to put the shower curtain inside the bathtub than outside.

Conroy' First Rule of Lawmaking: Any proposed legislation shall contradict some other proposed legislation so as to require a third piece of legislation to bridge the gap between the first two.

Conway's Law: In an organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. That person must be fired.

Cooke's Law: It is always hard to notice what isn't there.

Cooper's Law: Nothing will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome. 
Metalaw: A proliferation of new laws creates a proliferation of new loopholes.

Copeland's Observation: For being efficient a committee should only have three members of whom two are absent.

Cornuelle's Law: Authority tends to assign jobs to those least able to do them.

Corrigan' Social Law: The harder one tries to be elegant and sophisticated, the less so one appears.

Cory's Law of Parenting: Children become noisy as soon as you get on the telephone.  Zellie's Corollary: The worse the telephone connection, the louder the kids get.

Cosgrove's Paradox of Government Budgets: A government can balance its budget by borrowing to do so.

Coull's Comment: Every new project requires a tool that you don't have.

Courtois' Rule: If people listened to themselves more often, they would talk less.

Couvier's Law: There is nothing more frightening that ignorance in action.

Crane's Law: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. 
Definition: A specialist learns more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.
Kyle's Reversal: A generalist learns less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything.

Cranston's Deli Law: The larger the menu, the quicker the waitress comes to ask for your order.

Crayne's Law: All computers wait at the same speed.

Cromer's Laws: 1. A digital readout provides misinformation with greater accuracy than previously possible.
  2. People who don't believe in anything will believe the worst of other people.

Crosby's Law: You can tell how bad a musical is by how many times the chorus yells, "hooray".

Cusak's Observation: The driver's-side windshield wiper always wears out first. Corollary: The worst smear is at eye level.

Czliknsky's Law of Retail: If you want to browse, you will be inundated by clerks; if you want to buy, no clerk will be found.

Dacharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.

Dale's Parking Postulate: If only two cars are left in a parking lot, one will be blocking the other.

Darrow's Comment on History: History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history.

Darwin's Law: Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can. Bloch's Extension: So will Darwinists.
Second Law: Happiness is not found for work.

Dasgupta's Refutation of the Law of Thermodynamics: Two physical bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time...unless they are riding on a crowded bus.

Dave's Rules of Assembly: 1. The component that will take longest to replace is the one that breaks. 
2. When one hand is used to balance a partially assembled piece, the component necessary to secure the piece is out of reach.

Davis' Law: If a headline ends in a question mark, the answer is "no".

De Balzak's Axiom: Behind every great fortune there is a crime.

De Beaumarchais's Motto: It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.

De Nevers' Law of Debate: Two monologues do not make a dialogue. 
 Law of Complexity: The simplest subjects are the ones you don't anything about. 
 Lost Law: Never speculate on that which can be known for certain.

Deal's Laws of Sailing: 1. The amount of wind will vary inversely with the number and experience of the people you take on board.
2. No matter how strong the breeze when you leave the dock, once you have reached the farthest point from port, the wind will die.

Dedera's Law: In a three-story building served by one elevator, nine times out of ten the elevator car will be on a floor where you are not.

Defalque's Observation: A path without obstacles usually leads nowhere.

Dehay's Axiom: Simple jobs always get put off because there will be time to do them later.

Deitz's Law of Ego:The fury engendered by the misspelling of a name in a column is in direct ratio to the obscurity of the mentionee.

Democritus's Principle: Nothing exists except atoms and empty space. Everything else is opinion.

Denniston's Law: Virtue is its own punishment. Corollary: If you do something right once, someone will ask you to do it again. Bloch's Commentary: Denniston's Corollary properly applies to the statement: "Virtuous action will never go unpunished". Denniston's Law has much broader implications.

Destouces' Principle of Committee Meetings: The absent are always in the wrong.

Devries's Dilemma: If you hit two keys on a typewriter, the character you don't want comes out on paper.

Dick's Lemma: Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Dickerson's Work Ethic: Anyone can complete a large volume of work in a short period of time provided that the work is other than the work one is supposed to be working on at the time.

Digiovanni's Law: The number of Laws will expand to fill the publishing space available.

Dilling's Law: Whenever an erroneous word or letter can change the entire meaning of a sentence, the error will be in the direction of greatest embarrassment.

Diner's Dilemma: A clean tie attracts the soup of the day.

Dingle's Law: When somebody drops something, everybody will kick it around rather than pick it up.

Dirksen's Rule of the Road: Leaving a safe driving distance between your car and the car in front of you ensures that someone will cut into that space.

Disimoni's Rule of Cognition: Believing is seeing.

Disraeli's Dictum: Error is often more earnest than truth.

Doane's Laws of Procrastination: 1. The more proficient one is at procrastination, the less proficient one need be at all else. 
2. The slower one works, the fewer mistakes one makes.

Doc Martin's Laws of Football: 1. Your best play of the day will be nullified by a minor penalty.
2. Your opponents will make first downs by inches; you will come up short by inches.
3. Your most valuable player will be the first to be injured.

Dolin's Law of Research: The library will have every back issue of a magazine except for the issue you need for your research.

Donna's Feminist Discovery: If an article is "specially designed for women", it is the same as a man's model but twice as expensive.

Dooley's Law: Trust everybody, but cut the cards.

Dorian's Dictum: The further you travel to view the fireworks, the greater the chance of rain.

Dorr's Law of Athletics: In an otherwise empty locker room, any two individuals will have adjoining lockers.

Dowling's Law of Photography: One missed photographic opportunity creates a desire to purchase two additional pieces of equipment.

Dow's Law: In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion.

Drazen's Law of Restitution: The time it takes to rectify a situation is inversely proportional to the time it took to do the damage. Example #1: It takes longer to glue a vase together than to break one. Example #2: It takes longer to lose 'X' number of pounds than to gain 'X' number of pounds.

Drew's Law of Highway Biology: The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front of your eyes.
Law of Professional Practice: The client who pays the least complains the most.

Dr. Hendriks Simplified Law of Healthful Eating: If it tastes good, it's bad for you. If it tastes bad, it's good for you.

Dr. Silver's Restatement of Murphy's Law: Whatever does go wrong won't be authorized by your HMO.

Drummond's Law of Personnel Recruiting: The ideal résumé will turn up one day after the position is filled.

Ducharm's Axiom: If you view a problem closely enough, you will recognize yourself as part of the problem.
Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.

Duck's Political Principle: Any campaign reform only lasts until the powers regroup.

Dude's Law of Duality: Of two possible events, only the undesired one will occur.

Duezabou's Observation: If you abstain from drinking, smoking and carousing, you may not live longer - but it will feel longer.

Duggan's Law of Scholarly Research: The most valuable quotation will be the one for which you cannot determine the source. Corollary: The source for an unattributed quotation will appear in the most hostile review of your work.

Dumper's Principle of Neotony: An adult is a deteriorated child.

Dunlap's Laws of Physics: 1. Fact is solidified opinion. 
2. Facts may weaken under extreme heat and pressure. 
3. Truth is elastic.

Dunn's Law: Careful planning is no substitute for dumb luck.

Dunne's Law: The territory behind rhetoric is too often mined with equivocation.

Durant's Discovery: One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

Dyer's Law of Relativity: Life is short, but a three-hour movie is interminable.

Dykstra's Law: Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.