- M
- Madison's
Question:
- If you have to travel on a
Titanic, why not go first-class?
- Rev. Mahaffy's
Observation:
- There's no such thing as a
large whiskey.
- Maier's Law:
- If the facts do not conform
to the theory, they must be disposed of.
- Corollaries:
- The bigger the theory, the
better.
- The experiment may be
considered a success if no more than 50% of the observed
measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence
with the theory. (Compensation Corollary)
- Malek's Law:
- Any simple idea will be
worded in the most complicated way.
- Malinowski's Law:
- Looking from far above, from
our high places of safety in the developed civilization,
it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of
magic.
- Malloy's Maxim:
- The fact that monkeys have
hands should give us pause.
- The first Myth of Management
- It exists.
- Truths of
Management:
- Think before you act; it's
not your money.
- All good management is the
expression of one great idea.
- No executive devotes effort
to proving himself wrong.
- Cash in must exceed cash out.
- Management capability is
always less than the organization actually needs.
- Either an executive can do
his job or he can't.
- If sophisticated calculations
are needed to justify an action, don't do it.
- If you are doing something
wrong, you will do it badly.
- If you are attempting the
impossible, you will fail.
- The easiest way of making
money is to stop losing it.
- Truth 5.1 of
Management:
- Organizations always have too
many managers.
- Manly's Maxim:
- Logic is a systematic method
of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
- Mark's mark:
- Love is a matter of
chemistry; sex is a matter of physics.
- Marshall's
Generalized Iceberg Theorem:
- Seven-eighths of everything
can't be seen.
- Marshall's
Universal Laws of Perpetual Perceptual Obfuscation:
- Nobody perceives anything
with total accuracy.
- No two people perceive the
same thing identically.
- Few perceive what difference
it makes -- or care.
- Martha's Maxim
(and see Olum's Observation and Farrow's Finding):
- If God had meant for us to
travel tourist class, He would have made us narrower.
- Dean Martin's
Definition of Drunkenness:
- You're not drunk if you can
lie on the floor without holding on.
- Martin-Berthelot
Principle:
- Of all possible committee
reactions to any given agenda item, the reaction that
will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
amount of hot air.
- Martin's Laws of
Academia:
- The faculty expands its
activity to fit whatever space is available, so that more
space is always required.
- Faculty purchases of
equipment and supplies always increase to match the funds
available, so these funds are never adequate.
- The professional quality of
the faculty tends to be inversely proportional to the
importance it attaches to space and equipment.
- Martin's Law of
Committees:
- All committee reports
conclude that "it is not prudent to change the
policy (or procedure, or organization, or whatever) at
this time."
- Martin's
Exclusion: Committee reports dealing with
wages, salaries, fringe benefits, facilities, computers,
employee parking, libraries, coffee breaks, secretarial
support, etc., always call for dramatic expenditure
increases.
- Martin's Law of
Communication:
- The inevitable result of
improved and enlarged communication between different
levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of
misunderstanding.
- Martin's Minimax
Maxim:
- Everyone knows that the name
of the game is to let the other guy have all of the
little tats and to keep all of the big tits for yourself.
- Matsch's Law:
- It is better to have a
horrible ending than to have horrors without end.
- Matsch's Maxim:
- A fool in a high station is
like a man on the top of a small mountain: everything
appears small to him and he appears small to everybody.
- Matz's warning:
- Beware of the physician who
is great at getting out of trouble.
- Maugham's
Thought:
- Only a mediocre person is
always at his best.
- May's Law:
- The quality of the
correlation is inversely proportional to the density of
the control (the fewer the facts, the smoother the
curves).
- May's Mordant Maxim:
- A university is a place where
men of principle outnumber men of honor.
- 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.
- 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.
- McClaughry's Law
of Zoning:
- Where zoning is not needed,
it will work perfectly; where it is desperately needed,
it always breaks down.
- McDonald's Second
Law:
- Consultants are mystical
people who ask a company for a number and give it back to
them.
- McGoon's Law:
- The probability of winning is
inversely proportional to the amount of the wager.
- McGovern's Law:
- The longer the title, the
less important the job.
- McGurk's Law:
- Any improbable event which
would create maximum confusion if it did occur, will
occur.
- McKenna's Law:
- When you are right, be
logical. When you are wrong, be-fuddle.
- 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.
- McLean's Maxim:
- There are only two problems
with people. One is that they don't think. The other is
that they do.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- H. L. Mencken's
Law:
- Those who can -- do.
- Those who cannot -- teach.
- Those who cannot teach --
administrate. (Martin's Extension)
- Mencken's
Metalaw:
- For every human problem,
there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong.
- Merkin's Maxim:
- When in doubt, predict that
the present trend will continue.
- Merrill's First
Corollary:
- There are no winners in life;
only survivors.
- 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.
- 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.
- Michehl's
Theorem:
- Less is more.
- Pastore's Comment
on Michehl's Theorem:
- Nothing is ultimate.
- Mickelson's Law
of Falling Objects:
- Any object that is
accidentally dropped will hide under a larger object.
- Miksch's Law:
- If a string has one end, then
it has another end.
- Miller's Law:
- You can't tell how deep a
puddle is until you step into it.
- 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.
- MIST Law (Man In
The Street):
- The number of people watching
you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your
action.
- Mobil's Maxim:
- Bad regulation begets worse
regulation.
- 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.
- Money Maxim:
- Money isn't everything. (It
isn't plentiful, for instance.)
- Montagu's Maxim:
- The idea is to die young as
late as possible.
- Morley's
Conclusion:
- No man is lonely while eating
spaghetti.
- Morton's Law:
- If rats are experimented
upon, they will develop cancer. ("What this country
needs are some stronger white rats.")
- Mosher's Law:
- It's better to retire too
soon than too late.
- Munnecke's Law:
- If you don't say it, they
can't repeat it.
- Murchison's Law
of Money:
- Money is like manure. If you
spread it around, it does a lot of good. But if you pile
it up in one place, it stinks like hell.
-
- This page was last updated
05.22.1999 .
- Collection:Arthur Bloch
(original), Don Woods (update, last Aug 18, 1979)
- Copyright © 1998. All
rights reserved.
