top of page
Rules Quotes


"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules."


"You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over."


"If I'd observed all the rules, I'd never have got anywhere."


"Every discourse, even a poetic or oracular sentence, carries with it a system of rules for producing analogous things and thus an outline of methodology."


"I had these recipes that say do this, do that. Who MAKES these rules?"


"California lacks a lot of the rules and restrictions the East has. Every house is a different style, different material, different color. There's a lot of craziness out there."


"It is easy to study the rules of overloading and of templates without noticing that together they are one of the keys to elegant and efficient type-safe containers."


"I remember thinking during those times that I wanted to write in a way where there are no rules."


"To do it nationally or internationally, you have to follow a few more rules."


"You try to stay within the rules for the sake of the game, but you can always turn up the intensity."



"Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them."


"There are some good rules and there are some lousy rules."



"A computation is a process that obeys finitely describable rules."


"I had to realize that the use of samples has its rules, too."


"The citizen is becoming a pawn in a game where nobody knows the rules, where everybody consequently doubts that there are rules at all, and where the vocabulary has been diminished to such an extent that nobody is even sure what the game is all about."


"He who reigns within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king."


"There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs."



"It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them."


"The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own."



"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."



"I don't get to live by different rules. The same boundaries that apply to everyone apply to me."


"In their rules there was only one clause: Do what you will."



"The trouble with referees is that they know the rules, but they do not know the game."


"I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity."



"I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."


"Don't talk to me about rules, dear. Wherever I stay I make the goddam rules."


"We developed during the 1990s a series of budget process rules that helped us bring to heel these deficits, diminishing every year and moving the budget so into surplus."


"That's maybe the most important thing each generation does, is to break a lot of rules and make up their own way of doing things."


"I feel different than I did three years ago, in The Cider House Rules."


"I have taught my students not to apply rules or mechanical ways of seeing."



"Seeking the good is not primarily about rules and commandments."


"The big producer is going to figure out how to deal with whatever the rules are, but the little guy who is running a few hundred units or maybe feeding 1,500 cattle a year, how will they ever comply with these requirements?"


"I am not much about rules, I like to break 'em and don't like to make 'em."



"You're not allowed to step out of whatever the rules are, politically, or socially, and they'll get you for it, they'll hunt you down. That's the really frightening thing."


"There are two great rules of life: never tell everything at once."
bottom of page
