Murphy's Law and Others

Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will, and at the worst possible moment.

Corollaries to Murphy's Law:

• The other line always moves faster.
• When in doubt, use a bigger hammer.
• If you play with anything long enough, you'll break it.
• Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
• The greater the hurry, the slower the traffic.

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Peter Principle: In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his or her own level of incompetence.

Corollaries to the Peter Principle:

• All useful work is done by those who have not yet reached their levels of incompetence.
• Cream rises until it sours.

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Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill time available for its completion

Corollaries to Parkinson's Law

• An administrator wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals.
• Administrators make work for each other.
  

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from various sources

McCarthy's Maxim

"The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency."

Toynbee's Rule

"In matters of religion, it is very easy to deceive mankind and very difficult to undeceive them."

Thomas Jefferson on Religion

From Thomas Jefferson's letter to Mrs. H. Harrison Smith in 1816, this:

"I never told my own religion or scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be judged."