quotations about rules
You are remembered for the rules you break.
DOUGLAS MACARTHER
attributed, Taking Chances
It isn't hard to make rules, especially for other people.
NANCY ROCKWELL
"Prodigals: Are We The Older Brothers or The Party Friends?", Patheos, February 28, 2016
Free yourself from the rules of old judgments and create the space for new understanding.
STEVE MARABOLI
Life, the Truth, and Being Free
An exception proves the rule.
GEORGE T. LOWTH
The Morrices; or, The Doubtful Marriage
Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
All rules are the result of implicit or explicit efforts to achieve order and predictability among humans by creating classes of persons (positions) who are then required, permitted, or forbidden to take classes of actions in relation to required, permitted, or forbidden states of the world.
E. OSTROM
attributed, Rules, Games, and Common-pool Resources
They who, in the lesser transactions of life, are totally negligent of rule, will be in hazard of extending that negligence, by degrees, to such affairs and duties as will render them criminal.
HUGH BLAIR
Sermons
You can fight the rules, decide that being true to yourself means that you're above the rules, or insist that the rules are discriminatory and don't apply to you, but that means you are likely compromising your next job, raise or promotion opportunity.
NARETHA HOPSON
"Etiquette maven relates manners to career advancement", Virgin Islands Daily News, October 15, 2017
Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.
DAVID OGILVY
attributed, Decision Theory and Decision Analysis
Rules help us live our lives when we lose the will to do it on our own.
YVONNE WOON
Dead Beautiful
If a rule is not based on values, it doesn't deserve to be a rule.
LEBOGANG SEALE
"Severe corporal punishment still carried out at many SA schools", Independent Online, October 7, 2017
Rules should always be bent, if not broken. It's the only way to have any fun.
ALYSON NOËL
Evermore
Learn the rules so you know how to break them.
ANONYMOUS
It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.
G. K. CHESTERTON
What's Wrong with the World
It is a great mistake to follow the exception, instead of the rule; we must show ourselves as strict, and opposed to the exception; yet, as there are exceptions to every rule, we must decide with strictness, though with justice.
PASCAL
attributed, Day's Collacon
Man is as much a rule-following animal as a purpose-seeking one. And he is successful not because he knows why he ought to observe the rules which he does observe, or is even capable of stating all these rules in words, but because his thinking and acting are governed by rules which have by a process of selection been evolved in the society in which he lives, and which are thus the product of the experience of generations.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK
Law, Legislation, and Liberty
We all live by rules and regulations
Rules and regulations now
Isn't it a bore, isn't it a chore
Sometimes it's so hard remembering all those
Strict rules, codes, laws, all those stipulations
Rules and regulations now
But without those rules and regulations
Where would we be now
THOMAS & FRIENDS
"Rules & Regulations"
It is paltry philosophy if in the old-fashioned way one lays down rules and principles in total disregard of moral values. As soon as these appear one regards them as exceptions, which gives them a certain scientific status, and thus makes them into rules. Or again one may appeal to genius, which is above all rules; which amounts to admitting that rules are not only made for idiots, but are idiotic in themselves.
CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ
On War
A rule is like a mold; you pour in the wax, and when it is pressed, it comes out, and the mold is left behind.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Forget the rule!
Oh -- idiots rule!
JANE'S ADDICTION
"Idiots Rule"