Be content with your lot; one cannot be first in everything (’Juno and the Peacock’). A half a millenium later, the Roman poet Virgil put it this way in his Eclogues: “We cannot all do all things.”

Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched (’The Milkmaid and Her Pail’).

Familiarity breeds contempt (’The Fox and the Lion’). Later authorities on human nature also have amended this one. Thus Mark Twain held that “Familiarity breeds contempt … and children” (Notebooks) while Goodman Ace noted that “Familiarity breeds attempt.”

The gods help them that help themselves (’Hercules and the Waggoner’). This has been repeated with slight variations by others including Aeschylus (”God loves to help him who strives to help himself”) and Ben Franklin (”God helps those who help themselves”).

It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow (’The Ant and the Grasshopper’). This message also appears in the Bible: “Go to the ant thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise: Which having no guide overseer or ruler Provideth her meat in the summer and gathereth her food in the harvest” (Proverbs 6:6-8).

Slow and steady wins the race (’The Hare and the Tortoise’). Or, as Samuel Johnson phrased it in Rasselas: “Great works are performed not by strength but by endurance.”

The smaller the mind, the greater the conceit (’The Gnat and the Bull’).

United we stand divided we fall (’The Four Oxen and the Lion’). Benjamin Franklin embellished this thought when he warned his colleagues at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: “We must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” (This was in reply to John Hancock’s comment that “It is too late to pull different ways; the members of the Continental Congress must hang together.”) Abraham Lincoln came closer to Aesop’s original formulation with “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (speech, June 16th 1858).

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified (’The Old Man and Death’). Oscar Wilde expressed the same thought in An Ideal Husband: “When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.”

Law in full 

Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

Law in full 

The best simple-minded text of expertise in a particular area is an ability to win money in a series of bets on future occurrences in that area.

Law in full 

The more ridiculous a belief system, the higher the probability of its success.

Law in full 

To make a living, craftiness is better than learnedness.

Law in full 

Rule 1
Life is not fair — get used to it!

Rule 2
The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3
You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping — they called it opportunity.

Rule 6
If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7
Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8
Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9
Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Law in full 

If the converse of a statement is absurd the original statement is an insult to the intelligence and should never have been said.

Law in full 

If the assumptions are wrong, the conclusions aren’t likely to be very good.

Law in full 

For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.

Law in full 

There are two sides to every argument, unless a person is personally involved, in which case there is only one.

Law in full