Jokes and Puns: Lighten up your day!

Parker's Rule of Parliamentary Procedure: A motion to adjourn is always in order.

Pareto's Law (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.

Pardo's Postulates:
Anything good is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
The three faithful things in life are money, a dog, and an old woman.
Don't care if you're rich or not, as long as you live comfortably and can have everything you want.

Paradox of Selective Equality: All things being equal, all things are never equal.

Paperboy's rule of Weather: No matter how clear the skies are, a thunderstorm will move in 5 minutes after the papers are delivered.

Panic Instruction: When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.

Ozian Option: I can't give you brains, but I can give you a diploma.

Otten's Law of Typesetting: Typesetters always correct intentional errors, but fail to correct unintentional ones.

Otten's Law of Testimony: When a person says that, in the interest of saving time, he will summarize his prepared statement, he will talk only three times as long as if he had read the statement in the first place.

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

Orwell's Law of Bridge: All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely than others.

Orion's Law: Everything breaks down.

Ordering Principle: Those supplies necessary for yesterday's experiment must be ordered no later than tomorrow noon.

Optimum Optimorum Principle: There comes a time when one must stop suggesting and evaluating new solutions, and get on with the job of analyzing and finally implementing one pretty good solution.

Oppenheimer's Observation: The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.

Olum's Observation (and see Martha's Maxim and Farrow's Finding): If God had intended us to go around naked, He would have made us that way.

Old Children's Law: If it tastes good, you can't have it. If it tastes awful, you'd better clean your plate.

Old and Kahn's Law: The efficiency of a committee meeting is inversely proportional to the number of participants and the time spent on deliberations.

Oesner's Law (Oeser's Law?): There is a tendency for the person in the most powerful position in an organization to spend all his time serving on committees and signing letters.

Occam's Razor: Entities ought not to be multiplied except from necessity. Reformulations:
The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be correct.
Whenever two hypotheses cover the facts, use the simpler of the two.
Cut the crap.

Occam's Electric Razor: The most difficult light bulb to replace burns out first and most frequently.

The Obvious Law: Actually, it only SEEMS as though you mustn't be deceived by appearances.

O'Brien's Rule: Nothing is ever done for the right reason.

O'Brien's Principle (The $357.73 Theorem): Auditors always reject any expense account with a bottom line divisible by five or ten.

O'Brien's First Law of Politics: The more campaigning, the better.

Oaks's Unruly Laws for Lawmakers:
Law expands in proportion to the resources available for its enforcement.
Bad law is more likely to be supplemented than repealed.
Social legislation cannot repeal physical laws.

Nyquist's Theory of Equilibrium: Equality is not when a female Einstein gets promoted to assistant professor; equality is when a female schlemiel moves ahead as fast as a male schlemiel.

Nursing Mother Principle: Do not nurse a kid who wears braces.

No. 3 Pencil Principle: Make it sufficiently difficult for people to do something, and most people will stop doing it.
Corollary: If no one uses something, it isn't needed.

North Carolina Equine Paradox: Vyarzerzomanimororsezassezanzerareorses?

Noble's Law of Political Imagery: All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of the United States.
Corollary: Given a choice between two bald political candidates, the American people will vote for the less bald of the two.

Nobel Effect: There is no proposition, no matter how foolish, for which a dozen Nobel signatures cannot be collected. Furthermore, any such petition is guaranteed page-one treatment in the New York Times.

Nixon's Rule: If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

Ninety-ninety Rule of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.

Nies's Law: The effort expended by the bureaucracy in defending any error is in direct proportion to the size of the error.

Nienberg's Law: Progress is made on alternate Fridays.

Nick the Greek's Law: All things considered, life is 9-to-5 against.

Newton's Little-known Seventh Law: A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.

Newman's Law: Hypocrisy is the Vaseline of social intercourse.

Nessen's Law: Secret sources are more credible.

Evvie Nef's Law: There is a solution to every problem; the only difficulty is finding it.

Navy Law: If you can keep your head when all about you others are losing theirs, maybe you just don't understand the situation.

Law of Nations: In an underdeveloped country, don't drink the water; in a developed country, don't breathe the air.

NASA Truisms:
Research is reading two books that have never been read in order to write a third that will never be read.
A consultant is an ordinary person a long way from home.
Statistics are a highly logical and precise method for saying a half-truth inaccurately.

NASA Skylab Rule: Don't do it if you can't keep it up.

Nader's Law: The speed of exit of a civil servant is directly proportional to the quality of his service.

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

Mosher's Law: It's better to retire too soon than too late.

Morton's Law: If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer. ("What this country needs are some stronger white rats.")

Morley's Conclusion: No man is lonely while eating spaghetti.

Montagu's Maxim: The idea is to die young as late as possible.

Money Maxim: Money isn't everything. (It isn't plentiful, for instance.)

Moer's Truism: The trouble with most jobs is the resemblance to being in a sled dog team. No one gets a change of scenery, except the lead dog.

Mobil's Maxim: Bad regulation begets worse regulation.

MIST Law (Man In The Street): The number of people watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your action.

Mills's Law of Transportation Logistics:
The distance to the gate from which your flight departs is inversely proportional to the time remaining before the scheduled departure of the flight. Corollaries (Woods): 1) This remains true even as you rush to catch the flight. 2) From this it follows that you are invariably rushing the wrong way.

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

Miksch's Law: If a string has one end, then it has another end.

Mickelson's Law of Falling Objects: Any object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger object.

Michehl's Theorem: Less is more.
Pastore's Comment on Michehl's Theorem: Nothing is ultimate.

Meskimen's Laws: 1) When they want it bad (in a rush), they get it bad. 2) There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.

Merrill's Second Corollary: In the highway of life, the average happening is of about as much true significance as a dead skunk in the middle of the road.

Merrill's First Corollary: There are no winners in life; only survivors.

Merkin's Maxim: When in doubt, predict that the present trend will continue.

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

H. L. Mencken's Law: Those who can -- do. Those who cannot -- teach. Those who cannot teach -- administrate. (Martin's Extension)

Melcher's Law: In a bureaucracy, every routing slip will expand until it contains the maximum number of names that can be typed in a single vertical column.

Margaret Mead's Law of Human Migration: At least fifty percent of the human race doesn't want their mother-in-law within walking distance.

McNaughton's Rule: Any argument worth making within the bureaucracy must be capable of being expressed in a simple declarative sentence that is obviously true once stated.

McLean's Maxim: There are only two problems with people. One is that they don't think. The other is that they do.

McLaughlin's Law (and see Parson's Third Law): The length of any meeting is inversely proportional to the length of the agenda for that meeting.

McKenna's Law: When you are right, be logical. When you are wrong, be-fuddle.

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

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

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

McDonald's Second Law: Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and give it back to them.

McClaughry's Law of Zoning: Where zoning is not needed, it will work perfectly; where it is desperately needed, it always breaks down.

McClaughry's Law of Public Policy: Politicians who vote huge expenditures to alleviate problems get re-elected; those who propose structural changes to prevent problems get early retirement.

McCarthy's Law: Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important.

May's Mordant Maxim: A university is a place where men of principle outnumber men of honor.