Laws

Acton's Law: Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Ade's Law: Anyone can win, unless there's a second entry.

Airplane Law: When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer to is on time. (See Plotnick's Law.)

Alan's Law: The theory is supported as long as the funds are.

Albrecht's Law: Social innovations tend to the level of minimum tolerable well being.

Allen's Law: [Agnes Allen] Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

Amara's law: [Roy Amara] We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

Anderson's Law: Any system or program, however complicated, if looked at in exactly the right way, will become even more complicated.

Baer's Quartet: What's good politics is bad economics; what's bad politics is good economics; what's good economics is bad politics; what's bad economics is good politics.

Baldy's Law: Some of anything plus the rest of anything equals the whole thing.

Barnum's Law: [P. T. Barnum] You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Baxter's Laws: (1) Government intervention in the free market always leads to a lower national standard of living. (2) Baxter's Second Law: The adoption of fractional gold reserves in a currency system always leads to depreciation, devaluation, demonetization and, ultimately, to complete destruction of that currency. (3) In a free market good money always drives bad money out of circulation.

Becker's Law: Finding a job is more difficult than keeping a job.

Beckhap's Law: Beauty times brains equals a constant.

Benchley's Law: Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

Benford's law: In any collection of statistics, a given statistic has roughly a 30% chance of starting with the digit 1.

Berkeley's Laws: (1) Most problems have either many answers or no answer, few a single answer. (2) An answer may be wrong, right, both, or neither; most are both. (3) A chain of reasoning is no stronger than its weakest link. (4) An exception tests a rule; it never proves it. (5) If there is an opportunity to make a mistake, sooner or later it will be made. (6) Being sure mistakes will occur is a good frame of mind for catching them. (7) A great many problems do not have accurate answers, but do have approximate ones, from which sensible decisions can be made.

Berra's Law: [Yogi Berra] You can observe a lot just by watching.

Binary Law: There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who think in binary and those who don't.

Blauw's Law: Established technology tends to persist in spite of new technology.

Bohr's Law: The crazier the theory, the more likely it's correct, the harder it is to understand, and the more likely it is to be published.

Bok's Law: The cost of education is nothing compared to the cost of ignorance.

Boob's Law: You will always find what you're looking for in the last place you look.

Booker's Law: An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction. (i. e., 16000:1).

Borkowski's Law: You can't guard against the arbitrary.

Boyle's Laws: (1) The deficiency will never show itself during the dry runs. (2) Clearly stated instructions will consistently produce multiple interpretations.

Brooke's Law: When ever a system becomes completely defined, some fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.

Brooks's law: [Fred Brooks] Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Buchwald's Law: [Art Buchwald] When the economy gets better everything else gets worse.

Bucy's Law: Nothing worthwhile has ever been accomplished by a reasonable man.

Bunuel's Law: Overdoing things is harmful in all cases, even when it comes to efficiency.

Camp's Law: A coup known in advance is one that does not take place.

Carson's Law: It's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick.

Cayo's Law: The only time an event will start on time is when you're not.

Cheops' Law: [aka Pournelle's] Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

Chisholm's Laws: (2) When things are going well, something will go wrong. (3) Proposals, as understood by the proposer, will be judged otherwise by others.

Clarke's Laws: [Arthur C. Clarke] (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. (See Sheshak.)

Classen's Law: [Theo Classen] Usefulness varies as the logarithm of the technology.

Clopton's Law: For every credibility gap there is an overabundance of gullibility.

Clyde's Law: The longer you put off something that needs to be done, the greater the probability that it will be done by someone else.

Cohen's Law: What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts, not the facts themselves.

Cohn's Law: The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything.

Cole's Law: [coleslaw] shredded cabbage with slaw dressing

Comins's Law: People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.

Considine's Law: Whenever one word or letter can change the entire meaning of a sentence, the probability of an error will be in direct proportion to the resultant embarrassment.

Conway's Law: [Melvin Conway] In every organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on.

Cooke's Law: The amount of relevant information available on which to base a decision is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision.

Cook's Law: Much work, much food; little work, little food; no work, burial at sea.

Cooke's Law: In any decisive situation, the amount of relevant information available is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision.

Cooper's Law: In technical writing, a word not understood may be ignored with negligible loss of comprehension.

Crane's Law: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. ("tanstaafl")

Cropp's Law: The amount of work done is inversely proportional to the amount of office time.

Deadlock's Law: If the law-makers make a compromise, the place where it will be felt most is the taxpayer's pocket.

Deighton's Law: You can't make women happy.

Dieter's Law: The best tasting food has the most calories.

DeNever's Law: The simplest subjects are the ones you know nothing about.

Donohue's Law: Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.

Donsen's Law: The specialist learns more and more about less and less until, finally, he knows everything about nothing; whereas the generalist learns less and less about more and more until, finally, he knows nothing about everything.

Doorkey Law: A person's status is equal to the number of doors that person can open divided by the number of keys needed, from those with keys without doors to those for whom doors are opened for them.

Dow's Law: The higher the level in a hierarchy, the greater the confusion. (See Godin's and Imhoff's Law.)

Drazen's Law: The time to unfoul a foul-up is inversely proportional to the time it took to foul up. (See Wolf's Law.)

Dror's Laws: (1) While the difficulties and dangers of problems tend to increase at a geometrically, the knowledge and qualified manpower needed to deal with them tend to increase linearly. (2) While human capacities to shape the environment, society, and human beings are rapidly increasing, policymaking capabilities to utilize them remain the same.

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

Dyer's Law: Paper flow produces more paper flow. (See Fowler's Law.)

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

Edwards's Law: You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem.

Epstein's Law: An unsolved problem is bad, but a "solved" problem is worse.

Faber's Laws: (1) If there isn't a law, there will be. (2) The number of errors in any piece of writing rises proportionately to the writer's reliance on secondary sources. (3) "We're all going down the same road in different directions." (4) Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows.

Fairfax's Law: [fair facts] Any facts which, when included in the argument, give the desired result, are fair facts for the argument.

Fetridge's Law: Important things that are supposed to happen don't, especially when others are watching.

Finagle's Laws: (1) If an experiment works, something has gone wrong. (2) No matter what the experiment's result, there will always be someone eager to: (a) misinterpret it. (b) fake it. or (c) believe it supports his own pet theory. (3) In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake. (4) Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.

Finnegan's Law: The further away the future the better it looks.

Finnigan's Law: That which is most obviously correct, beyond all apparent need to check, is the mistake.

Firestone's Law: Chicken Little only has to be right once to be right.

FitzGibbon's Law: Creativity is inversely proportional to the number of cooks involved with the broth. (See Kirkland's Law.)

Flap's Law: Any inanimate object, regardless of its composition or configuration, may be expected to perform at any time in a totally unexpected manner for reasons that are either entirely obscure or completely mysterious. (See Harvard Law.)

Fowler's Law: In a bureaucracy, accomplishment is inversely proportional to the volume of paper used. (See Dyer's Law.)

Frankel's Law: Whatever happens in government could have happened differently, and it usually would have been better if it had.

Franklin's corollary to Comin's Law: People will not accept your idea more readily if you tell them Comins said it first.

Freeman's Law: Nothing is so simple it cannot be misunderstood.

Fried's Law: Ideas endure and prosper in inverse proportion to their soundness and validity.

Frisch's Law: You cannot have a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

Fudd's 1st Law: If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.

Fyfe's Laws: (1) Information necessitiating a change in plans will be communicated to the planner after -- and only after -- the plans are complete. (2) The more innocuous the change in plans appears the great the change will actually be. (3) It is always simpler to start over from scratch than make changes in a plan already started. (4) The more carefully and painstakingly a sample is analysed the greater the probablitity it will be found irrelevant.

Gadarene Swine Law: Merely because the group is in formation does not mean that the group is on the right course.

Galbraith's Law: Anyone who says he is not going to, four times, definitely will.

Gall's law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.

Gerrold's Law: A little ignorance can go a long way.

Gershwin's Law: It ain't necessarily so.

Glatum's Law: The perceived usefulness of an article is inversely proportional to its actual usefulness once bought and paid for.

Godin's Law: Generalized incompetence is directly proportional to hierarchal rank. (See Dow's and Imhoff's Law.)

Gold's Law: If the shoe fits, it's ugly.

Goodfader's Law: The few who are best will better the rest.

Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Gordon's First Law: If a project is not worth doing at all, it's not worth doing well.

Grabel's Law: Two does not equal three, even for very large values of two.

Gray's Law of Programming: n+1 trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same time as n trivial tasks.

Green's Law: Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

Gresham's Law: Trivial matters are handled promptly; important matters are never resolved.

Grosch's Law: Computing power is proportional to the square of the cost.

Gross's Law: When two people meet to decide how to spend a third person's money, fraud will result.

Gualtieri's Law: Where there's a will, there's a won't.

Gummidge's Law: [aka Prof. Corey's] "Expertise" is inversely proportional to number of statements understood by public.

Gumperson's Law: The probability of anything happening is in inverse proportion to its desirability.

Haldane's Law: The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we CAN imagine.

Hane's Law: There's no limit to how bad things can get.

Harden's Law: Whenever you have a terrific idea, someone else thought of it first.

Hardin's Law: You can never do merely one thing.

Harris's Law: Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.

Hartley's Laws: [Mariette Hartley] (1) You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back you've got something. (2) If you go to bed with anybody crazier than you are, you are crazier than they are.

Hart's Law: In a country as big as the United States, you can find fifty examples of anything.

Harvard Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, any experimental organism will do as it darn well pleases. (See Flap's Law.)

Harver's Law: A drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts.

Hein's Law: Problems worthy of attack Prove their worth by hitting back.

Hellrung's Law: If you wait, it will go away.

Herblock's Law: If it's good, they'll stop making it.

Herrnstein's Law: The total attention paid to an instructor is a constant regardless of the size of the class.

Hildebrand's Law: The quality of a department is inversely proportional to the number of courses listed in its catalog.

Hiram's Law: If you consult enough experts, you can confirm anything, (but too many experts disconfirm it.)

Hoare's Law: Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

Hofstadter's Law: [Douglas Hofstadter] It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Howe's Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work.

Hume's Law: Normative statements cannot be deduced exclusively from descriptive statements.

Hutber's law: Improvement means deterioration.

Iles's Law: There is an easier way to do it.

Imhoff's Law: In a bureaucracy, like a septic tank, the really big chunks always rise to the top. (See Dow's and Godin's Laws.)

Jacob's Law: To err is human, to blame someone else even moreso.

Jenkinson's Law: It won't work.

Juhani's Law: The cost of a compromise will always be more than that of either of the uncompromised alternatives.

Julian's Law: The one size that fits everyone doesn't fit anyone.

Katz's Law: Men and women will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted. (See Flap's and Harvard's Laws.)

Kelley's Law: Last guys don't finish nice.

Kelly's Law: Nothing's as simple as it seems

Kerckhoffs's Law: [Auguste Kerckhoffs] A [cryptological] system should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge.

Keynes's Law: Demand creates its own supply.

Kirkland's Law: The usefulness of any meeting is inversely proportional to the attendance. (See FitzGibbon's Law.)

Kitman's Law: Pure drivel drives out ordinary drivel.

Klipstein's Law: Tolerances will accumulate unidirectionally toward maximum difficulty of assembly.

Knight's Law: Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.

Koppett's Law: The probability of an outcome with the greatest inconvenience for the largest number approaches 100%.

Konigsberg's Law: 80% of success is showing up.

Kranzberg's Law: Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.

Kristol's Law: Being frustrated is disagreeable, but real disasters begin with getting what you want.

Langin's Law: If things were left to chance, they'd be better.

Langsam's Law: Everything depends.

Larkinson's Law: 100% of laws are basically false.

La Rochefoucauld's Law: Distrusting one's friends is more shameful than being deceived by them.

Last Law: If something did not go wrong, it should have.

Leahy's Law: A thing done wrong enough times becomes right, (but too many times even wronger.)

Le Chatelier's Law: If some stress is brought to bear on a system in equilibrium, the equilibrium is displaced in the direction which tends to undo the effect of the stress.

Leibniz's Law: aka Identity of Indiscernibles, If two objects have all their properties in common, then they are one and the same object.

Littlewood's Law: [E. Littlewood] Individuals can expect miracles to happen to them, at the rate of about one per month.

Lord Falkland's Law: Whenever it is unecessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision.

Lover's Law: A dandelion from a lover is better than an orchid from a friend.

Lowery's Law: If it jams, it needs to be forced; if it breaks when being forced, it needed replacing anyway.

Lubarsky's Law: There's always one more bug.

Lubin's Law: If another scientist thought your research was more important than his, he would drop what he is doing and do what you are doing.

Luce's Law: No good deed goes unpunished.

Lynch's Law: When the going gets tough, everybody leaves.

Lyon's Law: He who hesitates is last.

Maier's Law: If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.

Malek's Law: The simpler the idea the greater the complexity with which it will be communicated.

Malinowski's Law: From the safety of a developed civilization, the crudity and irrelevance of magic is most visible.

Matsch's Law: A horrible ending is better than endless horrors.

May's Law: The quality of the correlation is inversely proportional to the density of the control (the fewer the facts, the smoother the curves).

McGee's First Law: [Fibber McGee] It's amazing how long it takes to complete something you're not working on.

McGoon's Law: The probability of winning is inversely proportional to the amount of the wager.

McGovern's Law: The longer the title the less important is the corresponding job.

McGurk's Law: Any improbable event which would create maximum confusion if it did occur, will occur.

McLaughlin's Law: The length of a meeting is inversely porportional to the length of the agenda.

Meadow's Law: [Sir Roy Meadows] One death is a tragedy, two suspicious and three murder, until proved otherwise.

Mencken's Law: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; (Martin's Extention) those who can't teach, administrate.

Mencken's Metalaw: For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution which is always wrong.

Metcalfe's Law: [Robert Metcalf] "The value of a system grows as approximately the square of the number of users of the system."

Meyer's Law: The best thing to do is the most difficult.

Miksch's Law: If a string has one end it has two.

Miller's Law: You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step into it.

MIST Law: [man-in-street] The probability of being observed is directly proportional to the stupidity of your action.

Mondale's Law: If you think you understand, you are actually hopelessly confused.

Moore's Law: [Gordon Moore] The complexity of integrated circuits doubles every 18 months.

Mosher's Law: Retiring too soon is better than retiring too late.

Moynihan's Law: [Daniel Patrick Monihan] The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country.

Mrs. Parkinson's Law: Heat produced by pressure expands to fill the mind available, from which it can pass only to a cooler mind.

Muir's Law: [aka Commoner's 1st] Everything is connected to everything else.

Munnecke's Law: If you don't say it, they can't repeat it.

Muphry's Law: If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.

Murphy's Law: [Edward A. Murphy, Jr.]- Most commonly formulated as "if anything can go wrong, it will",

Nef's Law: [Evvie Nef] There is a solution to every problem; the only difficulty is finding it (or Him).

Nessen's Law: The credibility of a secret source is greater than that of a known one.

Nies' Law: The energy expended by a bureaucracy in minimizing any error is directly proportional to the magnitude of the error.

N - 1 Law: The last of a set is the most difficult to find.

Obvious Law: It only seems as though you mustn't be deceived by appearances.

Okrent's Law: "The pursuit of balance [in reporting] can create imbalance because sometimes something is true."

Orion's Law: Everything breaks down.

Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't.

Papagiannis' Law: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Pareto's Law (aka The 20/80 Law): 20% of the customers account for 80% of the turnover, 20% of the components account for 80% of the cost, and so forth.

Parkinson's Laws: [C. Northcote Parkinson] (1) Work expands to fill the time available for its completion; the thing to be done swells in perceived importance and complexity in a direct ratio with the time to be spent in its completion. (2) Expenditures rise to meet income. (3) Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay. (4) The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done. (5) If there is a way to delay an important decision the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it. (6) The progress of science is inversely proportional to the number of journals published.

Pascal's Law: [Blase Pascal] "The intelligent with originality see others'."

Patton's Law: A good plan today is better than a perfect one tomorrow.

Peer's Law: The solution to a problem changes the problem, but cannot solve it.

The Perversity of Nature Law: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.

Phidias' Law: 61.8% of everything is the golden ratio.

Pierson's Law: If you're coasting, you're going downhill.

Plotnick's Law: The delay in a departure time will is porportional to the square of the number of people involved. (See Airplane Law.)

Poe's Law: [Edgar Allan Poe] "The limits of a poem must accord with the limits of a single movement of intellectual apprehension and emotional exaltation".

Potter's Law: The amount of flak received on any subject is inversely proportional to that subject's true value.

Poulsen's Law: When anything is used to its full potential (aka breaking point), it will break.

Price's Law: If everyone doesn't want it, no one gets it.

Pudder's Law: Anything that begins well ends badly. Anything that begins badly ends worse.

Puritan's Law: Evil is live spelled backwards.

Putney's Law: If a democratic people are allowed the freedom to do so, they will vote away the freedoms essential to that democracy.

Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people -- those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

Raspberry Jam Law: The wider any culture is spread, the thinner it gets.

Reilly's Law: "People generally patronize the largest mall in the area."

Research Law: Enough research will tend to support your theory, but too much won't.

Researchers' Law: The probability of finding the source you need is inversely proportional to the distance to the source.

Revelation Law: The hidden flaw never remains hidden.

Rawson's First Law: As soon as you dispose of a book, a pressing need to refer to it will arise.

Robotics Laws: (0) A robot may not injure or through neglect allow Mankind to come to harm; (1) A robot may not injure a Human or through inaction allow a Human to come to harm. (2) A robot must obey an order by a Human except where such orders would conflict with law 1. (3) A robot must protect its own existence except where such protection would conflict with laws 1 and 2.

Roemer's Law: Hospital admissions vary with the number of beds.

Rothbard's Law: Everyone specializes in his own area of weakness.

Rudin's Law: In crises that force people to choose among alternate courses of action, most people will choose the worst one possible.

Runamok's Law: There are four kinds of people: (a) those who sit quietly and do nothing, (b) those who talk about sitting quietly and doing nothing, (c) those who do things, and (d) those who talk about doing things.

Runyon's Law: The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the higher probability.

Ryan's Law: Three consecutive correct guesses establishs you as an expert.

Sarnoff's Law: The value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers.

Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in.

Say's Law: [Jean-Baptiste Say] Supply creates its own demand.

Schmidt's Law: If you mess with a thing long enough, it'll break.

Schneier's Law: Any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can't think of how to break it.

Schuckit's Law: 100% of interference in human conduct has the potential for causing harm, no matter how innocuous.

Schultze's Law: If you can't measure output, measuring input is preferable to not measuring at all.

Scott's Laws: (1) The probability of something wrong looking right is greater than that of it looking wrong. (2) When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to have been correct in the first place.

Seay's Law: Nothing ever comes out as planned.

(Seeger's Law: Anything in parentheses can be ignored.)

Segal's Law: A man with a watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never sure.

Selective Gravity Law: An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Sells' Law: The first sample is the best sample.

Service's Law: It's later than you think.

Sevareid's Law: The chief cause of problems is solutions.

Shanahan's Law: A meeting's length is inversely proportional to the square of the number of attendees and its productivity inversely proportional to its length. (see Walinsky's Law)

Shermer's Last Law: Any sufficiently advanced alien intelligence is indistinguishable from god.

Shirley's Law: Most people deserve each other.

Simon's Law: Everything that is put together comes apart.

Smith's Law: No real problem has a solution; a solvable problem is not worth solving.

Spock's Law: You know more than you think you know.

Stewart's Law: It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Stigler's Law: No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.

Suhor's Law: A little ambiguity never hurts, (not like none or much.)

Sweeney's Law: The length of a progress report is inversely proportional to the amount of progress.

Tacitus' Law: The unknown always passes for the marvelous.

Terman's Law: The correlation between the quality and cost of education is negligible.

Thermodynamics' 4th Law: If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is almost zero.

Thyme's Law: Everything will go wrong at once.

Torquemada's Law: When you are right, you have a moral duty to impose your will on everyone who is wrong.

Trinary Law: There are three kinds of people in the world : those who can count and those who can't.

Truly Large Number Law: With a large enough sample many odd coincidences become likely.

Turner's Law: Nearly 100% of public propheesies are wrong.

Tuttle's Law: The percentage of working hardware in the world is constant.

Tylk's Law: Assumption is the mother of foul-ups.

Udall's Law: If everyone agrees on something, it's wrong.

The Ultimate Law: 100% of general statements are false, including this one.

Unnamed Law: If it happened, it was not impossible.

Unspeakable Law: As soon as you mention something, if it is good, it goes away. if it is bad, it happens.

Valery's Law: If it's always been accepted as true, it's almost certainly false.

Van Roy's Law: A toy that cannot break can break toys that can.

Vique's Law: A man without a religion is like a fish without a bicycle.

Walinsky's Law: Intelligence in a discussion is inversely proportional to the square of the number of people involved. (see Shanahan's Law)

Walton's Second Law: No one can lose what he never had.

Watson's Law: The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number and significance of the observer(s).

Weiler's Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who does not have to do it himself.

Weinberg's Laws: (1) Progress is made on alternate Fridays. (2) If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

Weskimen's Law: There is never enough time to do a thing right, but alway enough time to do it over.

Westheimer's Law: Months in the laboratory is worth hours in the library. (720:1).

Whitehead's Law: The obvious is often overlooked.

Wiltshire's Law: "To define is to limit."

Wisdom Law: Wisdom is considered a sign of weakness by the powerful because a wise man can lead without power, but only a powerful man can lead without wisdom.

Wicker's Law: Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

Wirth's Law: Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.

Wittgenstein's Law: Of that of which nothing is known nothing can be said.

Wolf's Law: The time and energy to undo a wrong is much greater than that to do one. (see Drazen's Law)

Wyszowski's Laws: (1) No experiment is reproducible. (2) Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough (but not if you do so too long)".

Young's Law: The greatest discoveries are accidental ones.

Zimmerman's Law: No one notices when things go right.

Zipf's Law: [George Kingsley Zipf] A few words are used very often, but many or most are used rarely.

Zymurgy's 1st Law: Once you open a can of worms, the only way to re-can them is to use a bigger can.