“A principle is universal, a rule is inflexible, a law is invariable.”
The Six Principles of the Performance Event
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Robert Fripp 17
English guitarist, composer and record producer 1946Related quotes
“Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.”
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
“It is an inflexible law that all living things must seek to dominate their environment.”
The Uncertain Midnight (1958)
Opposing Article X of the Covenant of the League of Nations which would obligate members of the League of Nations to collective response. As quoted in Autobiographical Notes of Charles Hughes (1973) edited by D. J. Danelski and J. S. Tulchin
Context: I think that it is a fallacy to suppose that helpful cooperation in the future will be assured by the attempted compulsion of an inflexible rule. Rather will such cooperation depend upon the fostering of firm friendships springing from an appreciation of community ideals, interests, and purposes, and such friendships are more likely to be promoted by freedom of conference than by the effort to create hard and fast engagements.
Ten Sermons of Religion (1853), III : Of Justice and the Conscience https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ten_Sermons_of_Religion/Of_Justice_and_the_Conscience
Context: Justice is the constitution or fundamental law of the moral universe, the law of right, a rule of conduct for man in all his moral relations. Accordingly all human affairs must be subject to that as the law paramount; what is right agrees therewith and stands, what is wrong conflicts and falls. Private cohesions of self-love, of friendship, or of patriotism, must all be subordinate to this universal gravitation towards the eternal right.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Book 3: "Ocean Continents"
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part 2: Variety, p. 130