• If anything can go wrong, it will
  Corollary: It can
  MacGillicuddy’s Corollary: At the most inopportune time
• If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong
• If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway
• If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
  Corollary: It will be impossible to fix the fifth fault, without breaking the fix on one or more of the others
• Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse
• If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something
• Nature always sides with the hidden flaw
  Corollary: The hidden flaw never stays hidden for long.
• Mother nature is a b***h.
• Murphy’s Law of Thermodynamics
  Things get worse under pressure.
• The Murphy Philosophy
  Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse.
• Quantization Revision of Murphy’s Laws
  Everything goes wrong all at once.
• Murphy’s Constant
  Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value
• Murphy’s Law of Research
  Enough research will tend to support whatever theory.
• Research supports a specific theory depending on the amount of funds dedicated to it.
• Addition to Murphy’s Laws
  In nature, nothing is ever right. Therefore, if everything is going right … something is wrong.
• More Laws
• Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
• It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
• Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
• 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.
• Nothing is as easy as it looks.
• Everything takes longer than you think.
• Everything takes longer than it takes.
• If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
• Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
• Every solution breeds new problems.
• The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.
• no matter how perfect things are made to appear, Murphy’s law will take effect and screw it up.
• You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
• The chance of the buttered side of the bread falling face down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
• The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
• More Laws of Selective Gravitation.
• A falling object will always land where it can do the most damage.
• A shatterproof object will always fall on the only surface hard enough to crack or break it.
• A paint drip will always find the hole in the newspaper and land on the carpet underneath (and will not be discovered until it has dried).
• A dropped power tool will always land on the concrete instead of the soft ground (if outdoors) or the carpet (if indoors) - unless it is running, in which case it will fall on something it can damage (like your foot).
• If a dish is dropped while removing it from the cupboard, it will hit the sink, breaking the dish and chipping or denting the sink in the process.
• A valuable dropped item will always fall into an inaccessible place (a diamond ring down the drain, for example) - or into the garbage disposal while it is running.
• If you use a pole saw to saw a limb while standing on an aluminum ladder borrowed from your neighbor, the limb will fall in such a way as to bend the ladder before it knocks you to the ground.
• If you pick up a chunk of broken concrete and try to pitch it into an adjacent lot, it will hit a tree limb and come down right on the driver’s side of your car windshield.
• The greater the value of the rug, the greater the probability that the cat will throw up on it.
• You will always find something in the last place you look.
• If your looking for more than one thing, you’ll find the most important one last.
• It is never in the last place you look. It is in the first place you look, but never discovered on the first attempt.
• After you bought a replacement for something you’ve lost and searched for everywhere, you’ll find the original.  You have to look where you lost it. No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you’ve bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.
• The other line always moves faster.
• In order to get a loan, you must first prove you don’t need it.
• Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost you more than you thought.
• If you fool around with a thing for very long you will screw it up.
• If it jams - force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
• When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly.
• Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will use it.
• Everyone has a scheme for getting rich that will not work.
• In any hierarchy, each individual rises to his own level of incompetence, and then remains there.
• There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.
• When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble, delegate.
• Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral or fattening.
• Murphy’s golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.
• A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
• In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
• Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference.
• Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
• No good deed goes unpunished.
• Where patience fails, force prevails.
• Erma Bombeck
  “Anything dropped in the bathroom will fall in the toilet.
• Heisenberg indetermination principle applied to ill luck:
  The better you know the amount of ill luck that will strike you,
  the worse you know when this will happen,
  and vice-versa.
  and Relativistic correction of Murphy’s law:
  Whether things can go wrong or not, it depends on your frame of reference.
  Corollary (otherwise said: ill luck is actually absolute):
  Regardless of your frame of reference, things will go wrong anyway.
• If you want something bad enough, chances are you won’t get it.
• If you think you are doing the right thing, chances are it will back-fire in your face.
• When waiting for traffic, chances are that when one lane clears the other is congested.
• Just when you think things cannot get any worse, they will.
• Remember the “Boomer-rang” effect; Whatever you do will always come back.
• If you re-act to actions, you’ve acted on actions.
• He who angers you controls you, there-fore you have no control over your anger.
• Any time you put an item in a “safe place”, it will never be seen again.
• Your best golf shots always occur when playing alone.
• The worst golf shots always occur when playing with someone you are trying to impress.
• No matter how hard you try, you cannot push a string.
  (getting everyone in the family to the car at the same time for example)
• The fish are always biting….yesterday!
• You will never leave a parking space without someone in an adjacent space leaving at the same time.
• The cost of the hair do is directly related to the strength of the wind.
• Great ideas are never remembered and dumb statements are never forgotten.
• The clothes washer/dryer will only eat one of each pair of socks.
• When you see light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel will cave in.
• The light at the end of the tunnel is a train
• Cole’s Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.
• Being dead right, won’t make you any less dead.
  and Having the right of way, won’t make you any less dead.
• Whatever you want, you can’t have, what you can have, you don’t want.
• Whatever you want to do, is Not possible, what ever is possible for you to do, you don’t want to do it.
• Traffic is inversely proportional to how late you are, or are going to be.
• The complexity and frustration factor is inversely proportional to how much time you have left to finish, and how important it is.
• Crespins law of observation:
  the probability of being observed is in direct proportion to the stupidity of ones actions
• If you go to bed with an itchy ass, you wake up with smelly fingers.
• A knowledge of Murphy’s Law is no help in any situation.
• If you apply Murphy’s Law, it will no longer be applicable.
• If you say something, and stake your reputation on it, you will lose your reputation.
• no matter where I go, there I am
• Where patience fails, force prevails.
• Murphy’s Law Current Revision
  Any thing that can go wrong, HAS Already Gone Wrong!
  You just haven’t been notified.
• The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny…”
• A former colleague of Russell Cooper once claimed that Murphy had plagiarized his “Gamble’s Law” which says that “The letter box is always on the other side of the road”
• If many things can go wrong, they will all go wrong at the same time.
• If anything can go wrong, it will happen to the crankiest person.
• Waxman’s Law:
  Everything tastes more or less like chicken.
• Skarstad’s Observation
  You will never find any more loose change than you have already lost.
• If authority was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
• all good things come to those who wait…
  but , don’t wait too long or they will pass you by…
  like 2 ships that pass in the night…
  never again to return that same exact site.
• If anything was worth doing, it would’ve already been done.
  Corollary: Nothing is worth doing.
• You can do anything except light a paper match on a marshmallow under water.
• Ants will always infest the nearest food cupboard.
• Long’s Law - Those who know the least will always know it the loudest.
• McFalls’ Maxim - No degree of acceptance can ever change the facts.
  Translation: You may come to terms with being screwed, but nevertheless you’re still screwed.
• Hunter’s Corollary to Murphy’s Law: - Things always go from bad to worse.
• Hunter’s Observation on Beauty: Beauty is only skin deep, fashion even shallower.
• Hunter’s Observation on Experts:
  An expert is someone with an opinion and a word processor.
• Hunter’s Observation on Sugarcoating:
  All pornography is air-brushed or computer-enhanced.
• Hunter’s Observation on hypocrites:
  A person without values or standards can never be a hypocrite.
• Hunter’s Observation on Education and Oz:
  “We can give you a diploma, but we can’t give you a brain.”
• Sgt. Murphy’s Law - Don’t get into a pissing contest with a skunk.
• The Law of Stupid Tricks
  Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
• Garbage abhors a vacuum. It will grow to fill available space.
  Corollary: The more space you have, the more junk you’ll have.
• Paper is always strongest at the perforation.
• Things are never as good as they are bad.
• Chaos always wins, because it’s better organized.
• The Wingwalker’s Rule: Don’t let go of something until you have a hold of something else.
• A bird in the hand is messy.
• The mud that won’t come off on the doormat immediately adheres to the carpet.
• When you wear new shoes for the first time, everyone will step on them.
• If Murphy’s law is correct, everything East of the San Andreas Fault will slide into the Atlantic.
• If Murphy’s Law can go wrong it will.
• Cheer up, the worst is yet to come…
• If at first you don’t succeed destroy all evidence that you ever tried.
• Mrs. Murphy’s Law:
  If anything can go wrong it will go wrong when Mr. Murphy is out of town….
• If all else fails, hit it with a big hammer.
• Warneke Law - You cannot force Murphy’s Law to happen and you can’t use it in reverse.
• When something goes wrong, you cannot find the solution in the instruction booklet, but someone else always does.
• Everything in life is important, important things are simple, simple things are never easy. Think about it, complete the circle.
• It takes forever to learn the rules and once you’ve learned them they change again.
• The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
  the pessimist fears this is true.
• You will find an easy way to do it, after you’ve finished doing it.
• Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you think, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
  In Las Vegas, wherever you want to go in a casino, it’s as far as possible from where you are, no matter where you are.
• The wind will always blow opposite to your hairdo
• Wind velocity increases directly with the cost of the hairdo.
• The probability of the toast landing peanut-butter-side-down is directly proportionate to the cost of the carpeting.
• Laundry Math:1 Washer + 1 Dryer + 2 Socks = 1 Sock
• Window polishing: -It’s always on the other side.
• Hall’s Law:Anyone who isn’t paranoid simply isn’t paying attention.
• (Another) Hall’s Law - Minor problem isn’t.
• A valuable falling in a hard to reach place will be exactly at the distance of the tip of your fingers.
• If a valuable falls in a hard to reach place at a distance shorter than the tip of your finger, as soon as you try to reach it you’ll push it to that distance.
• If it looks good, And it taste good,  And it feels good, There has got to be something wrong some where, So be careful.
• Two heads are better than one, even if one is a sheep head.
• The probability of rain is inversely proportional to the size of the umbrella you carry around with you all day.
• No matter how hard you try, every once in a while, something is going right.
• Behind every little problem there’s a larger problem, waiting for the little problem to get out of the way.
• When you really need something, its either not available, or can’t be found.  When you don’t need it, its either available, or lays around in plain sight.
• Whenever you cut your finger nails, you find a need for them an hour later.
• Law of Conservation of Filth:
  In order for something to get clean, something else must get dirty.
  Conclusion to the Law of Conservation of Filth:
  It is possible for everything to get dirty and nothing to get clean.
• The file you are looking for is always at the bottom of the largest pile.
• Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.
• Gumperson’s Law: The likelihood of something happening is in inverse proportion to the desirability of it happening.
• Uffelman’s Razor: [Given Murphy's law, ...] One should not attribute to evil design any unfortunate result which can be attributed to error. A mistake (or series of mistakes) is the simpler and more likely explanation.
  Conspiracy Corollary to Uffelman’s Razor:
  Nothing should be attributed to conspiracy that can be explained by error or a succession of errors.
• Example 1: The alleged conspiracy to “fake” the Apollo moon landing.
  Such an undertaking would be so likely to result in multiple glitches that it would be nearly impossible to pull off. Thus, conspiracy is an unlikely explanation of events. Accordingly, the “evidence” of the “faked” landing is more likely a result of the errors of those interpreting the evidence than of the evil design of the alleged conspirators.
• Example 2: The Warren Report.
  Any open questions in the Warren Report are more likely the result of the errors of the Warren commission, or the errors of those interpreting the Warren Report, than the result of a conspiracy to cover up the true facts.

copyright 1995, 2002. David G. Uffelman

• Probability law:
  Probabilities serve only and exclusively to determine the degree of improbability of the catastrophes that actually take place.
  Corollary: If something is likely to happen AND desirable, it won’t happen.
• Common Sense Is Not So Common
• Power Is Taken… Not Given
• Two wrongs don’t make a right. It usually takes three or four.
• If the truth is in your favor no one will believe you.
• When things go from bad to worse, the cycle repeats.
• Laws are like a spider web, in that it snares the poor and weak while the rich and powerful brake them.
• key to happiness is to be O.K. with not being O.K.
• The two most abundant things in all the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
• Stupidity is the fundamental driving force of the Universe, which explains why stupid people always go wrong.
• Every rule has an exception except the Rule of Exceptions.
• If your action has a 50% possibility of being correct, you will be wrong 75% of the time.
• If you plan for something to go wrong, and it doesn’t go wrong, it would have been ultimately profitable for it to go wrong.
• Common sense isn’t.
• The difference between Stupidity and Genius is that Genius has its limits.
• The universe is great enough for all possibilities to exist.
• Those who don’t take decisions never make mistakes.
• The only price you pay for greatness is knowing that it can’t last forever.
• Anything that cant possible in a million years go wrong, will go wrong.
• Anything that seems right, is putting you into a false sense of security.
• If everything seems great, its already gone wrong.
• The only time you’re right, is when its about being wrong.
• The only times something’s right, is when everyone agrees its wrong.
• If a Murphy law is tried to be used to have a desired outcome, the law will backfire.
• Its never so bad it couldn’t be worse.
• Murphy’s Metalaw - Knowing Murphy’s Law will never help.
• Avoidance Law - If for some reason Murphy’s Law fails to operate, it is building up for something big.
• Hermetic Murphism - As above, so below.
• The big catastrophes are made up of smaller ones.
• Buddha’s Version of Murphy’s Law
  Decay is inherent in all things, strive unceasingly.
• Fleming’s corollary: Nothing ever gets better.
• Murphologist’s Curse
  Given time one can develop a sense of how Murphy’s Law will act, but the Murphy Sense will tingle only after it is too late to keep the excreta from impacting the rotating blade based wind generator.
• The probability that something can go wrong is directly proportional to the square of the amount of inconvenience it can cause you
• Everything that could possibly go wrong for anyone else always seems to happen to you
• Law of cooperatives
  In any particular situation, if three things can go wrong, they usually do in sequence, each facilitating the occurrence of the next
• Mr. Murphy warning: Don’t mess with Mrs. Murphy
• Mrs. Murphy’s Law: If something goes wrong, it’s Mr. Murphy’s fault.
• Mrs. Murphy’s Law:If anything can go wrong it will, and when it does, the woman will get the blame
• Lewis’ Axiom = The person ahead of you in the queue, will have the most complex transaction possible
• Every problem is replaceable with a bigger one.
• Another name for Murphy’s law: The law of conservation of misery
• Carvalheiro’s deduction - If in a particular circumstance Murphy’s law don’t apply, then something must be wrong
• Sharad’s Law - If Murphy’s law is right then it will go wrong
• A law about websites: The more important it is to get to a website, the greater the chance the server is down.
• This site won’t open when you want to show someone what exactly Murphy laws are
• Murphy’s law is intrinsic.
• Larry Niven’s summary of Murphy’s Law:
  The perversity of the universe tends to a maximum.
• The road to success is always under construction
• and never forget O’Toole’s Corollary or Sod’s Law or McGillicuddy Law
  Murphy was an optimist
  Well, there are a lot of people who think he was an optimist, aren’t there?
  Or in other words: someone else always seems to get the credit for your work.
  The harder you work the more people there will be to claim credit except when it backfires. You get all the credit for the dumb move.
  Murphy was an extreme optimist!
• And we’ll end this page with something optimistic (don’t hit me).
  Don’t worry about Murphy’s Law, you know it’s gonna happen anyway, so just get on with it and get it over with!
• The humor of Murphy’s Law leaves you laughing at the end of the day.
  If you make it through a Murphy Day…you win!

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