I used to work with a guy who would offer the advice "Don't pet a burning dog." Which, I will confess, seemed hard to dispute. Once we were together in a plumbing shop, and one of us made that comment. The staff member there looked at us with shock, and asked where we had heard that. According to him, that was a mis-speaking of some advice from a steel mill, where the correct phrase was "Never climb down a burning dog" and "never ride on a melting pig", in reference to equipment/vessels in a mill.
Dad had a few gems that have appeared here already. One of his favorites was (usually) in reference to cattle ranchers that were poor with machinery "If you gave that guy an anvil to operate, he'd break it..."
In reference to engineers/designers - "If its not broken, it doesn't have enough features..."
You can fix everything with WD40 and duct tape. If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use WD40.
The torque spec: Tighten it until it breaks, then back it off a half-turn. Or, perhaps more helpful, stop twisting a half-turn before it breaks.
The best manager I ever had was fond of saying "Are ya kiddin' me?"
On project work, I have started using a couple.... 1) the only way a project ever gets done on time is if task #1 is building a time machine, and it gets completed successfully...., or 2) there's no problem that we can't fix with money. Or 3) It could be worse - we could have to do this for a living....
But probably the one that makes me smile most is a highly respected colleague who used to describe a good situation by saying "You're sh&tting in high cotton now..."
Or the tee shirt that says "Common sense is so rare now that it must be considered a super-power."
Thanks for the posts, everyone. This was a great chuckle.
danr
Oh, one more - a former boss managing a crew running equipment on durability tests used to say "For this next job, step one is to put your brain in your lunch box."