
“The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.”
Cleveland Address, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.
“The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.”
1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)
Context: I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement. For years I worked within the Artificial Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies and other inhospitalities, but eventually they had gone too far: I could not remain in an institution where such things are done for me against my will.
So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free. I have resigned from the AI lab to deny MIT any legal excuse to prevent me from giving GNU away.
“I believe in the Golden Rule - The Man with the Gold… rules.”
Attributed
“Ten Golden Rules (for the album of a young conductor)”
Recollections and Reflections
"Karen Armstrong Joins Pangea Day!" (2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ5ZmB2kdo0
Context: A project like Pangea, which enables us to enter in to the situations of others, imaginatively, is fulfilling what the religions call the Golden Rule... going into one's own experience, and going into other's experience, and seeing the world from another perspective — that's what we desperately need in our dangerously polarized world.
Disme: the Art of Tenths, Or, Decimall Arithmetike (1608)
“Submission to the experimental data is the golden rule that dominates any scientific discipline.”
La soumission aux données de l'expérience est la règle d'or qui domine toute discipline scientifique.
in his speech when he was awarded the Academician sword, address to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (October 19, 1993).
Part I, Chapter 17, Experiments in Dietetics
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)