Quotes About Rules

Speakers who have grown up in the American community unconsciously know its rules about taking turns in conversations-in the same way that they know the rules of grammar and the rules about appropriate speech in various situations.

The unwritten rules of behaviour are infinite in number, finely shaded, and subtle to the last fraction of a degree. They are not to be broken. If broken, the rules of forgiveness leading to re-establishment are equally of air and iron. I learn these rules with rather less ease than my contemporaries because, in the back streets of my being, a duel is developing and increasing in fervour between my instinct which knows why something is so, and my hen-pecking intelligence which wishes to analyse why something is so.

When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing. This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can. If you don't know it's impossible it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.

Confucius is like the Torah, rules to follow. And Lao-Tzu is even more conservative, saying that if you do nothing you won't break any rules. You have to let tradition fall sometime, you have to take action, you have to eat bacon.

It is the peculiar province of the legislature to prescribe general rules for the government of society; the application of those rules to individuals in society would seem to be the duty of other departments.

I'm a terrible sentence finisher. I think that's why I'm a songwriter. When you write a song, there are no rules, and I think that I talk as if there are no rules. But then I run this great risk of no one understanding me at all.

I have only two rules which I regard as principles of conduct. The first is: Have no rules. The second is: Be independent of the opinion of others.

There are people who look at the rules and find ways to structure around them. The more complex the rules, the more opportunities.

What scared me in that debate is that it's not about the ownership rules at all. The vast majority of people don't even know what the rules say, to be perfectly candid. Name all six of them.

You need to realize that most writing rules aren't laws, they're rules of thumb.

Women are tough campaigners. They certainly know how to withstand attacks. And I think we make a mistake if we say, as some do, that women should play by different rules, or that they are somehow especially vulnerable to the rules of politics. I don't think that's true.

By the time Kafka was seven or eight years old, he already had a relatively dark view of the world derived from experiences in his own family. This told him that the world was organized in a strictly hierarchical manner and that those on the top were allowed to mete out punishment in any way they chose. They were entitled to leave those on the bottom uninformed about the rules to which they subscribed; they weren't even required to follow their own rules - this is how Kafka described it in his later Letter to My Father.

Good motives aside, white condescension does more damage than good. White condescension says to a black child, 'The rules used by other ethnic groups don't apply to you. Forget about work hard, get an education, posses good values. No, for you, we'll alter the rules by lowering the standards and expecting less.' Expect less, get less.

Everything is perfect. Everything is fine. The rules of life are made up. The rules only exist in your mind. Of course there may be courtesies And closures and laws to abide, But the zeal with which you play Relies on where YOU draw the line

The only good thing about religion is the music. Because nature is filled with balances and opposites, there are always exceptions to the overall rules, whether the overall rules are bleak or otherwise. If you propound a joyous theory of existence, I will find an exception to that. If I propound a bleak theory, someone will find a joyous exception. That's just nature being nature, I think, and I don't think it offers a lot of hope. It's sort of a respite along the way.

It's not the rules everywhere, you know? That's not the rules everywhere - that things have to be dumbed down in order to become massively popular. And that hasn't always been the rule, even in America.

The refs are so confused themselves because there's so many rules. It's like, 'Oh my gosh I've never seen this many rules in my life.' And everybody's trying to govern this and justify that.

There’s so much distance between the fundamental rules and the final phenomenon, that it’s almost unbelievable that the final variety of phenomenon can come from such a steady operation of such simple rules.

Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.

Creativity means learning where the rules exist, and then breaking them! Saying, "It's better this way." But you have to know the rules in order to break them with any grace.

Police officials routinely execute search warrants on private homes and offices, and Congressional offices should not be treated any differently. There cannot be one set of rules for elected officials and another set of rules for everyone else.

The rules of marriage were simple and easy to follow: faithfulness, patience, compromise. But there were no rules to divorce, or if there were, he had not yet discovered them.

There ain't no rules here, we're trying to accomplish something...All this talk about rules...When the deal goes down...we make 'em up as we go along.

In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.

People who know how to creatively break the rules also know why the rules were there in the first place.

He knows no other way but ugliness,” Sir Topher said quietly. “He was taught no other lessons but those of force. His teachers have been scum who live by their own rules. No one has ever taught him otherwise.” “Am I to forgive?” she said, her voice shaking with anger. “No,” he said sadly. “Pity him. Or give him new rules. Or put him down like a wild animal before he becomes a monster who destroys everything he encounters.

Just as a poet often has license from the rules of grammar and pronunciation, we should like to ask for 'physicists' license from the rules of mathematics in order to express what we wish to say in as simple a manner as possible.

I bet Richard Fuld doesn't have an ounce of contrition. It's just megalomania. When it's like that, you need rules to prevent catastrophe. When banks are borrowing the government's credit rating, you need rules to prevent stupid things.

It seems to me an utterly futile task to prescribe rules and limitations for the conduct of war. War is not a game; hence one cannot wage war by rules as one would in playing games. Our fight must be against war itself. The masses of people can most effectively fight the institution of war by establishing an organization for the absolute refusal of military service.

I have rules for a lot of areas of my life. Love is not going to be one of them.

My top priority in any trade negotiation is expanding opportunity for hardworking Americans. It's no secret that past trade deals haven't always lived up to their promise, and that's why I will only sign my name to an agreement that helps ordinary Americans get ahead, the bill put forward today would help us write those rules in a way that avoids the mistakes from our past, seizes opportunities for our future and stays true to our values.

Two basic rules of life are: 1) Change is inevitable. 2) Everybody resists change.

Take all the rules away. How can we live if we don't change?

When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment, we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port to steer.

The guiding principle of ruling elites was--and still is: When change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed.

The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of 'how to do'. The salvation of photography comes from the experiment.

There are two rules for achieving anything. Rule No. 1: Get started. Rule No. 2: Keep going.

Italian is a very different poetic situation and there are these hard and fast rhythmic periods, settenari, ottonari of seven and eight syllables. These are fundamental to the way people speak and write and breaking them is more radical in Italian than when we break a line. I'm sure there are Italian poets who want to write poetry as prose and break these Petrarchan rules. And breaking them is fun and a valid thing to do. But I'm more interested in trying to write poetry that absorbs tradition and uses it in new ways, and doesn't throw it out.

But suppose, asks the student of the professor, we follow all your structural rules for writing, what about that something else that brings the book alive? What is the formula for that? The formula for that is not included in the curriculum.

The American people expect more from Congress. They expect fiscal responsibility and common sense. They expect us to return to the pay-as-you-go budget rules that we had enacted in the past that helped us establish a surplus, however briefly.

I am the common man. I'm polite, I love my family and I play by the rules. And sometimes I get pushed around. That's my lifestyle, and that's what I try to bring to characters.

I try and get on my yoga mat at least three times a week, and if I don't, things start to unravel. I admire routine and ritual, but I am not inherently good at keeping a schedule. I eat at different times every day, I wake up at different times, I change my mind about things I was so sure of the day before. Perhaps I am too passionate, too willing to bend the rules in the name of fun, or to pass the time, or who knows what? Being on stage is truly what puts it all into perspective, and after I get on stage, I take a moment to reflect, and I am set for another 24 hours.

There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.

The gospel alone is sufficient to rule the lives of Christians everywhere - any additional rules made to govern men's conduct added nothing to the perfection already found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionaliti es or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.

Write a lot. And finish what you write. Don't join writer's clubs and go sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it. I set those rules up years ago, and nothing's changed.

If you just read Leviticus on the surface, you may think it's just a bunch of grumpy irrelevant rules; but, it's actually the way God gave his people access to himself.

I love good food but I follow strict rules the days I perform.