“The process of specialization tends, almost inevitably, to narrow the sources from which the rules of any science are drawn; and English law is no exception from this rule.”

“The science of agriculture does not lay down any positive rules, but it develops the motives by which the best possible method of proceeding may be discovered and successfully pursued. In fact, the art executes some law given and received, but it is from science that law emanates.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

“Methodological rules are for science what rules of law and custom are for conduct.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

“Because it is clear from the fossil record that almost every species that has ever existed is extinct; extinction is the rule, survival is the exception.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

“Monte Carlo roulette, if judged by returns which are published... is, if the laws of chance rule, from the standpoint of exact science the most prodigious miracle of the nineteenth century.”

Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician

“The professional tends to classify and to specialize, to accept uncritically the ground rules of the environment. The ground rules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serves as a pervasive environment of which he is contentedly unaware.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

“Part of the strength of science is that it has tended to attract individuals who love knowledge and the creation of it. Just as important to the integrity of science have been the unwritten rules of the game. These provide recognition and approbation for work which is imaginative and accurate, and apathy or criticism for the trivial or inaccurate… Thus, it is the communication process which is at the core of the vitality and integrity of science…”

Philip Abelson (1913–2004) US physicist, editor of the journal Science, and director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Geoph…

“I am not to blame for putting forward, in the course of my work on science, any general rule derived from a previous conclusion.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

“There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright