Abbott's Admonitions:
If you have to ask, you're not entitled to know.
If you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked the question.
Abrams's Advice:
When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.
Rule of Accuracy:
When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know
the answer.
Corollary: Provided, of course, that you know there is a problem.
Acheson's Rule of the Bureaucracy:
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
Acton's Law:
Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Ade's Law:
Anybody can win -- unless there happens to be a second entry.
Airplane Law:
When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer to is on
time.
Albrecht's Law:
Social innovations tend to the level of minimum tolerable well being.
Algren's Precepts:
Allen's Law of Civilization:
It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming
up it.
Agnes Allen's Law:
Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.
Fred Allen's Motto:
I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
Alley's Axiom:
Justice always prevails ... three times out of seven.
Alligator Allegory:
The objective of all dedicated product support employees should be to thoroughly
analyze all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their occurrence,
have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve these problems
when called upon. However, when you are up to your ass in alligators, it
is difficult to remind yourself that your initial objective was to drain
the swamp.
Allison's Precept:
The best simple-minded test of experience in a particular area is the ability
to win money in a series of bets on future occurrences in that area.
Anderson's Law:
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked
at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
Andrews's Canoeing Postulate:
No matter which direction you start it's always against the wind coming back.
Law of Annoyance:
When working on a project, if you put away a tool that you're certain you're
finished with, you will need it instantly.
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 always strike
your toes.
Laws of Applied Confusion:
1) The one piece that the plant forgot to ship is the one that supports 75%
of the balance of the shipment. Corollary: Not only did the plant forget
to ship it, 50% of the time they haven't even made it.
2) Truck deliveries that normally take one day will take five when you are
waiting for the truck.
3) After adding two weeks to the schedule for unexpected delays, add two
more for the unexpected, unexpected delays.
4) In any structure, pick out the one piece that should not be mismarked
and expect the plant to cross you up.
Corollaries:
1) In any group of pieces with the same erection mark on it, one should not
have that mark on it.
2) It will not be discovered until you try to put it where the mark says
it's supposed to go.
3) Never argue with the fabricating plant about an error. The inspection
prints are all checked off, even to the holes that aren't there.
Approval Seeker's Law:
Those whose approval you seek the most give you the least.
The Aquinas Axiom:
What the gods get away with, the cows don't.
Army Axiom:
Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.
Army Law:
If it moves, salute it; if it doesn't move, pick it up; if you can't pick
it up, paint it.
Ashley-Perry Statistical Axioms:
1) Numbers are tools, not rules.
2) Numbers are symbols for things; the number and the thing are not the same.
3) Skill in manipulating numbers is a talent, not evidence of divine
guidance.
4) Like other occult techniques of divination, the statistical method has
a private jargon deliberately contrived to obscure its methods from
nonpractitioners.
5) The product of an arithmetical computation is the answer to an equation;
it is not the solution to a problem.
6) Arithmetical proofs of theorems that do not have arithmetical bases prove
nothing.
Astrology Law:
It's always the wrong time of the month.
Fourteenth Corollary of Atwood's General Law of Dynamic Negatives:
No books are lost by loaning except those you particularly wanted to keep.
Avery's Rule of Three:
Trouble strikes in series of threes, but when working around the house the
next job after a series of three is not the fourth job -- it's the start
of a brand new series of three.