These 75-odd laws are more than highlights of pop psychology. They have a great bearing on the intricacies of our life and work. Read them and learn.
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Pareto's Principle - The 80-20 Rule
Formulated by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1906. Basically, it is a mathematical formula that described the unequal distribution of wealth in Italy, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth. Management thinker Joseph M. Juran framed this law as ‘20 percent of something is always responsible for 80 percent of the result’.

Also known as "vital few and trivial many"

80 percent of results come from 20 percent of efforts
80 percent of activity will require 20 percent of resources
80 percent of usage is by 20 percent of users
80 percent of the difficulty in achieving something lies in 20 percent of the challenge
80 percent of revenue comes from 20 percent of customers
80 percent of problems come from 20 percent of causes
80 percent of profit comes from 20 percent of the product range
80 percent of complaints come from 20 percent of customers
80 percent of sales will come from 20 percent of sales people
80 percent of corporate pollution comes from 20 percent of corporations
80 percent of work absence is due to 20 percent of staff
80 percent of road traffic accidents are cause by 20 percent of drivers
80 percent of a restaurant's turnover comes from 20 percent of its menu
80 percent of your time spent on this book will be spent on 20 percent of this book

Godwin's Law
Also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies), the law states:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Although in one of its early forms Godwin's Law referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions, the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and more recently blog comment threads and wiki talk pages.

Murphy's law
A popular adage in Western culture that most likely originated at Edwards Air Force Base in 1948. The Law broadly states that things will go wrong in any given situation, if you give them a chance. "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way." It is most often cited as "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong" (or, alternately, "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time," or, "Anything that can go wrong, will," or even, "If anything can go wrong, it will, and usually at the most inopportune moment").

Amara's law
We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run".
- Roy Amara.

Arthur's First Law
High-tech markets are dominated 70-80% by a single player—product, company, or country.
- W. Brian Arthur

Alda's First Law of Laws
All laws are local.
- Alan Alda

Barnum's Law
You’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Benford's law
In any collection of statistics, a given statistic has roughly a thirty percent chance of starting with the digit one.

Benford's law of controversy
Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.

Brooks's Law
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Named after Fred Brooks - author of the well known tome on project management, The Mythical Man-Month.

Dilbert Principle
The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management. Coined by Scott Adams, author of the comic strip Dilbert.

Duverger's law
Winner-take-all electoral systems tend to create a two party system, while proportional representation tends to create a multiple party system. Named after Maurice Duverger.

Finagle's Law
Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment. A version of Murphy's law. Finagle was not a real individual.

Fulmer's law
Any male who makes it to the age of eighteen without being arrested or dead is just lucky. Coined as an observation of young male behavior, including, in hindsight, his own.

Gresham's Law
Bad money drives good money out of circulation. Coined in 1858 by British economist Henry Dunning Macleod, and named for Sir Thomas Gresham (1519 - 1579). Earlier stated by others, including Nicolaus Copernicus.

Hotelling's law
Under some conditions, it is rational for competitors to make their products as nearly identical as possible. Named after Harold Hotelling.

Hutber's law
Improvement means deterioration. Coined by financial journalist Patrick Hutber.

Keynes's Law
Demand creates its own supply. Attributed to economist John Maynard Keynes, and contrasted to Say's law.

Kołakowski's Law (otherwise, the "Law of the Infinite Cornucopia")
For any given doctrine that one wants to believe, there is never a shortage of arguments by which to support it. Put forth by Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski

Littlewood's Law
Individuals can expect miracles to happen to them at the rate of about one per month. Coined by Professor John Edensor Littlewood.

Metcalfe's law
In network theory, the value of a system grows as approximately the square of the number of users of the system. Framed by Robert Metcalfe.

Moore's Law
The complexity of an integrated circuit will double in about 24 months. Stated in 1965, though not as a law, by Gordon E. Moore, later a co-founder of Intel. A figure of 18 months is often quoted.

Morton's Fork
A person who lives in luxury and has clearly spent a lot of money must obviously have sufficient income to pay as tax. Alternatively, a person who lives frugally and shows no sign of being wealthy must have substantial savings and can therefore afford to pay it as tax. Named after John Morton, tax collector for King Henry VII of England.

Murphy's Law
If anything can go wrong, it will. Alternately, If it can happen, it will happen. Ascribed to Major Edward A. Murphy, Jr. Many corollaries have been stated.

Murphy's law (alternate)
If there are two ways to do something, and one of them will result in a disaster, somebody will choose that way. Also ascribed to Major Edward A. Murphy, Jr.

Ockham's Razor
Explanations should never multiply assumptions without necessity. When two explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable. Named after William of Ockham. Also known as Occam's Razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Orgel's rules.
Formulated by evolutionary biologist Leslie Orgel.
First rule: Whenever a spontaneous process is too slow or too inefficient a protein will evolve to speed it up or make it more efficient.
Second rule: Evolution is cleverer than you are.

Parkinson's Law
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Coined by C. Northcote Parkinson.

Peter Principle
In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. Coined by Laurence J. Peter.

Reed's law
The utility of large networks, particularly social networks, scales exponentially with the size of the network. Named after David P. Reed.

Reilly's law
People generally patronize the largest mall in the area.

Duffy's law
Most people are wrong about most things most of the time.

Edwards' law
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem.

Goodhart's law
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation
Any statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one error.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle
States that one cannot measure values (with arbitrary precision) of certain conjugate quantities, which are pairs of observables of a single elementary particle. The most familiar of these pairs is the position and momentum.

Hlade's Law
If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person; they will find an easier way to do it.

Moynihan's law
The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country. - Coined by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927 - 2003).

Reilly's law
About Retail Gravitation, people generally patronize the largest mall in the area.

Rothbard's law
Everyone specializes in his own area of weakness.

Sturgeon's law
Nothing is always absolutely so.
- Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985)

Sturgeon's revelation
"90 percent of everything is crud."

Sutton's law
Go where the money is. Often cited in medical schools to teach new doctors to spend resources where they are most likely to pay off. The law is named after bank robber Willie Sutton, who when asked why he robbed banks is claimed to have answered "Because that's where the money is.

Wirth's law
Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.

Dunbar's number
Proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, it measures the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships". Dunbar theorizes that "this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size ... the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained."

In a 1992 article, Dunbar used the correlation observed for non-human primates to predict a social group size for humans. Using a regression equation on data for 38 primate genera, Dunbar predicted a human "mean group size" of 147.8 (casually represented as 150), a result he considered exploratory due to the large error measure (a 95% confidence interval of 100 to 230).

Some example explanations using the notion of a monkeysphere are:
- "Whenever you make new close personal friends, you have to drop some old personal friends to make room for them in your monkeysphere."
- "The reason that the people in village X don't mind doing Y to the people in village Z is because the people in village Z are not in the monkeysphere of people in village X."
- "Because the number of people in that department exceeded 150, which is the size of the human monkeysphere, they had to split the department into two."
Recently, the number has been used in the study of Internet communities, especially MMORPGs such as Ultima Online. Neo-Tribalists have also used it to support their critiques of modern society.

Groupthink
A type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance. The term is usually used as a derogatory term after the results of a bad decision.
- Wikipedia

Pinker's Second Law
Human sociality is a product of conflicts and confluences of genetic interests. Our relationships with our parents, siblings, spouses, friends, trading partners, allies, rivals, and selves have different forms because they instantiate different patterns of overlap of ultimate interests. History, fiction, news, and gossip are endlessly fascinating because the overlap is never 0% or 100%.
- Steven Pinker

Gelernter's Second Law
One expert is worth a million intellectuals. (This law is only approximate.)
- David Gelernter

Lohr's Law
The future is merely the past with a twist—and better tools.
- Steve Lohr

Vardi's Law
Experts predictions are always correct.

1. A certain portion of all predictions made by experts will be correct.
2. Human memory is short.
3. Make lot of forecasts, most of the people will remember the correct ones.
4. A good hedge: make contradictory predictions with intervals between them.
- Yossi Vardi

Kleiner's Law
Every organization always operates on behalf of the perceived needs and priorities of some core group of key people. This purpose will trump every other organizational loyalty, including those to shareholders, employees, customers, and other constituents.
- Art Kleiner

Delta's Law
There are three sides to every story.
- Delta Willis

Rushkoff's Law
A religion will increase in social value until a majority of its members actually believe in it—at which point the social damage it causes will increase exponentially as long as it is in existence.

Rushkoff's Law of Media
True communication can only occur between people with equal access to the medium in which the communication is taking place.
- Douglas Rushkoff

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