Encyclopedia of Humor

Familiarity breeds attempt.

Familiarity breeds children.

Far-away talent always seems better than home-developed talent.

Fill what is empty; empty what is full; scratch where it itches.

For every “10″ there are 10 “1′s”.

For every action, there is a corresponding over-reaction.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.

For every credibility gap there is a gullibility fill.

For every idiot proof system devised, a new, improved idiot will arise to overcome it.

Exceptions prove the rule, and wreck the budget.

Excuses are like bodies; everybody has one!

Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.

Experience is something you do not get until just after you need it.

Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.

Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.

Experiment and theory often show remarkable agreement when performed in the same laboratory.

Experiments should be reproducible. They should all fail in the same way.

Extremes meet.

Fact without theory is trivia; theory without fact is garbage.

Bureau Termination, Law of: When a government bureau is scheduled to be phased out, the number of employees in that bureau will double within 12 months after the decision is made.

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

Calkin’s Law of Menu Language: The number of adjectives and verbs that are added to the description of a menu item is in inverse proportion to the quality of the dish.

Canada Bill Jones’s Motto: It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

Canada Bill Jones’s Supplement: A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.

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.

Carlson’s Consolation: Nothing is ever a complete failure; it can always serve as a bad example.

Carson’s Observation on Footwear: If the shoe fits, buy the other one, too.

Chism’s Law of Completion: The amount of time required to complete a government project is precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.

Chisolm’s First Corollary to Murphy’s Second Law: When things just can’t possibly get any worse, they will.

Boucher’s Observation: He who blows his own horn always plays the music several octaves higher than originally written.

Bove’s Theorem: The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal increases as the deadline approaches.

Boyle’s Laws: (1) The success of any venture will be helped by prayer, even in the wrong denomination. (2) When things are going well, someone will inevitably experiment detrimentally. (3) The deficiency will never show itself during the dry runs. (4) Information travels more surely to those with a lessor need to know. (5) An original idea can never emerge from committee in the original. (6) When the product is destined to fail, the delivery system will perform perfectly. (7) The crucial memorandum will be snared in the out-basket by the paper clip of the overlying correspondence and go to file. (8) Success can be insured only by devising a defense against failure of the contingency plan. (9) Performance is directly affected by the perversity of inanimate objects. (10) If not controlled, work will to the competent man until he submerges. (11) The lagging activity in a project will invariably be found in the area where the highest overtime rates lie waiting. (12) Talent in staff work or sales will recurringly be interrupted as managerial ability. (13) The “think positive” leader tends to listen to his subordinates’ premonitions only during the postmortems. (14) Clearly stated instructions will consistently produce multiple interpretations. (15) On successive charts of the same organization the number of boxes will never decrease. – Charles P. Boyle, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA

Bradley’s Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee; that will do them in.

Brady’s First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, “How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?”

Brien’s First Law: At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.

Brilliant’s Law Of Limited Ambition: If you can’t learn how to do it well, learn how to enjoy doing it poorly.

Brilliant’s Observation On Modern Art: Not all our artists are playing a joke on the public. Some are genuinely mad.

Berra’s Law: You can observe a lot just by watching. – Yogi Berra

Bierman’s Laws of Contracts: (1) In any given document, you can’t cover all the “what if’s”. (2) Lawyers stay in business resolving all the unresolved “what if’s”. (3) Every resolved “what if” creates two unresolved “what if’s”.

Billing’s Law: Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so. – Josh Billings

Billings Phenomenon: The conclusions of most good operations research studies are obvious. – Robert E. Machol (The name refers to a well-known Billings story in which a farmer becomes concerned that his black horses are eating more than his white horses. He does a detailed study of the situation and finds that he has more black horses than white horses, Machol points out.)

Bloom’s Seventh Law of Litigation: The judge’s jokes are always funny.

Blutarsky’s Axiom: Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason.

Bolton’s Law Of Ascending Budgets: Under current practices, both expenditures and revenues rise to meet each other, no matter which one may be in excess. – Joe Bolton, Fellow of the RAND Graduate Institute

Bonafede’s Revelation: The conventional wisdom is that power is an aphrodisiac. In truth, it’s exhausting. – Dom Bonafede in a February, 1977 article in the Washington Post entitled “Surviving in Washington”

Boren’s Laws Of The Bureaucracy: (1) When in doubt, mumble. (2) When in trouble, delegate. (3) When in charge, ponder. – James H. Boren, Founder, President and Chairperson of the Board of the International Association of Professional Bureaucrats [INATAPROBU]