Terrible Truths (and other Principles of Disaster)

Laws that work! (With thanks to Chirag Patel).

1. Murphy's First Law: Nothing is as easy as it looks.
2. Murphy's Second Law: Everything takes longer than you think.
3. Murphy's Third Law: In any field of scientific endeavor, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
4. Murphy's Fourth Law: 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.
5. Murphy's Fifth Law: If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
6. Murphy's Sixth Law: If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
7. Murphy's Seventh Law: Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
8. Murphy's Eighth Law: If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
9. Murphy's Ninth Law: Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
10. Murphy's Tenth Law: Mother Nature is a bitch.
11. Murphy's Eleventh Law: It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.
12. Schmidt's Observation: All things being equal, a fat person uses more soap than a thin person.
13. Nick the Greek's Law of Life: All things considered, life is 9 to 5 against.
14. Nowlan's Theory: He who hesitates is not only lost, but several miles from the next freeway exit.
15. Van Roy's Law: Honesty is the best policy - there's less competition.
16. Van Roy's Truism: Life is a whole series of circumstances beyond your control.
17. Agnes' Law: Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of.
18. Clarke's Conclusion: Never let your sense of morals interfere with doing the right thing.
19. Goda's Truism: By the time you get to the point where you can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
20. Johnny Carson's Definition: The smallest interval of time known to man is that which occurs in Manhattan between the traffic signal turning green and the taxi driver behind you blowing his horn.
21. Wilner's Observation: All conversations with a potato should be conducted in private.
22. The Phone Booth Rule: A lone dime always gets the number nearly right.
23. Zall's Laws: (1) Any time you get a mouthful of hot soup, the next thing you do will be wrong. (2) How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.
24. Ettore's Observation: The other line moves faster.
25. Griffin's Thought: When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.
26. Manly's Maxim: Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
27. Cann's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.
28. Macaluso's Doctrine: You've never been as sick as just before you stop breathing.
29. Knebel's Law: It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
30. The Law of Selective Gravity, or the Buttered-Side Down Law: An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
31. Stale's Law: No matter how careful one is in resealing the inner liner in a cereal box, it will tear where it is glued to the box.
32. William's Law: There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved by brute strength and ignorance.

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