Acton’s Law

Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Allen’s Rule

The limbs, ears, and other appendages of warm-blooded animals in cold climates are shorter than those of equivalent animals in warm climates.

Allen’s Rule

The limbs, ears, and other appendages of warm-blooded animals in cold climates are shorter than those of equivalent animals in warm climates.

Amara’s Law

There is a tendency to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run.

Badger’s Law

Websites with the word truth in the URL have none in the posted content.

Betteridge’s Law

Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.

Cunningham’s Law

On the internet, the best way to get a correct answer is not by asking a question but by posting the wrong answer.

Dunbar’s Number

The number of people with whom any one person can maintain stable social relationships is 150.

Gresham’s Law

Bad money drives out good money.

Gumperson’s Law

The probability of a given event is inversely proportional to its desirability.

Hanlon’s Razor

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

Hick’s Law

The time it takes a person to make a decision is a function of the number of possible choices.

Hubble’s Law

Galaxies recede from an observer at a rate proportional to their distance from the observer.

Humphrey’s Law

Conscious attention to a task typically performed automatically can impair performance.

Littlewood’s Law

Expect miracles (defined as events with odds of one in a million) once every thirty-five days.

Miller’s Law

The number of subjects an average person can hold in working memory is approximately seven.

Napoleon’s Law

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Pareto’s Law

Eighty percent of consequences derive from twenty percent of causes; twenty percent of the peapods in a garden contain eighty percent of the peas.

Parkinson’s Law

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Peter Principle

Employees rise to the level of their incompetence.

Roemer’s Law

If you build a hospital bed, it will be filled.

Sinclair’s Law

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Stigler’s Law

No scientific discovery is named after its discoverer. (Statistician Stephen Stigler attributes the law to sociologist Robert Merton.)

Sturgeon’s Law

Ninety percent of everything is crap.

Van Loon’s Law

Mechanical development is in inverse ratio to the number of slaves at a country’s disposal.

Wirth’s Law

Software gets slower more quickly than hardware gets faster.

Zeigler’s Law

If a politician says government is a problem, what the politician means is that if he or she is elected, government will be a problem.