Thermodynamics

I'm not particularly looking forward to teaching thermo later this semester, but the following quote gets me close.

Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions.

--Seth Lloyd, writing in Nature 430, 971 (26 August 2004). (Wikiquote:Thermodynamics)