Quotes about ruling
page 21

Eugene V. Debs photo
Park Benjamin, Sr. photo
Diane Abbott photo

“White people love playing ‘divide & rule’. We should not play their game.”

Diane Abbott (1953) British Labour Party politician

Twitter post reproduced in Daily Telegraph, 5 Jan 2012 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/8994068/Diane-Abbott-White-people-love-playing-divide-and-rule.html
2010s, 2012

Pythagoras photo

“None can be free who is a slave to, and ruled by, his passions.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Florilegium, XVIII, 23, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 368
No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself.
As translated by Nicholas Rowe(1732)
No man is free who cannot command himself.
As quoted in Moral Encyclopaedia, Or, Varlé's Self-instructor, No. 3 (1831) by by Charles Varle
No man is free who cannot control himself.
As quoted in 25 Days to Better Thinking and Better Living: A Guide for Improving Every Aspect of Your Life (2006) by Linda Elder and Richard Paul
Florilegium

Niall Ferguson photo
Ramon Llull photo

“If understanding followed no rule at all, there would be no good in the understanding nor in the matter understood, and to remain in ignorance would be the greatest good.”

Ramon Llull (1232–1316) Majorcan writer and philosopher

The Hundred Names of God cited in: Margaret A. Boden (2006) Mind As Machine: A History of Cognitive Science. Vol 1. p. 56

Gustave Flaubert photo

“As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

William James, in The Will to Believe (1897)
Misattributed

Francis Escudero photo
Anne Brontë photo

“At your time of life, it's love that rules the roast: at mine, it's solid, serviceable gold.”

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XX : Persistence; Mr. Maxwell to Helen

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Paul Ryan photo
Sydney Smith photo

“In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give your style.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, ch. 11 http://books.google.com/books?id=R18JAAAAQAAJ&q=%22In+composing+as+a+general+rule+run+your+pen+through+every+other+word+you+have+written+you+have+no+idea+what+vigour+it+will+give+your+style%22&pg=PA382#v=onepage
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

Vladimir Lenin photo
Alfred Russel Wallace photo

“On the question of the "origin of species" Mr. Haughton enlarges considerably; but his chief arguments are reduced to the setting-up of "three unwarrantable assumptions," which he imputes to the Lamarckians and Darwinians, and then, to use his own words, "brings to the ground like a child's house of cards." The first of these is "the indefinite variation of species continuously in the one direction." Now this is certainly never assumed by Mr. Darwin, whose argument is mainly grounded on the fact that variations occur in every direction. This is so obvious that it hardly needs insisting on. In every large family there is almost always one child taller, one darker, one thinner than the rest; one will have a larger nose, another a larger eye: they vary morally as well; some are more poetical, others more morose; one has a genius for numbers, another for painting. It is the same in animals: the puppies, or kittens, or rabbits of one litter differ in many ways from each other - in colour, in size, in disposition; so that, though they do not "vary continuously in one direction," they do vary continuously in many directions; and thus there is always material for natural selection to act upon in some direction that may be advantageous. […] I will only, in conclusion, quote from it a short paragraph which contains an important truth, but which may very fairly be applied in other quarters than those for which the author intended it: - "No progress in natural science is possible as long as men will take their rude guesses at truth for facts, and substitute the fancies of their imagination for the sober rules of reasoning."”

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist

"Remarks on the Rev. S. Haughton's Paper on the Bee's Cell, And on the Origin of Species" (1863).

Brian Leiter photo

“Rosen would still demand, no doubt, an explanation of why the ruling class is so good at identifying and promoting its interests, while the majority is not. But, again, there is an obvious answer: for isn’t it generally quite easy to identify your short-term interests when the status quo is to your benefit? In such circumstances, you favor the status quo! In other words, if the status quo provides tangible benefits to the few—lots of money, prestige, and power—is it any surprise that the few are well-disposed to the status quo, and are particularly good at thinking of ways to tinker with the status quo (e. g., repeal the already minimal estate tax) to increase their money, prestige, and power? (The few can then promote their interests for exactly the reasons Marx identifies: they own the means of mental production.) By contrast, it is far trickier for the many to assess what is in their interest, precisely because it requires a counterfactual thought experiment, in addition to evaluating complex questions of socio-economic causation. More precisely, the many have to ascertain that (1) the status quo—the whole complex socio-economic order in which they find themselves--is not in their interests (this may be the easiest part); (2) there are alternatives to the status quo which would be more in their interest; and (3) it is worth the costs to make the transition to the alternatives—to give up on the bad situation one knows in order to make the leap in to a (theoretically) better unknown. Obstacles to the already difficult task of making determinations (1) and (2)—let alone (3)—will be especially plentiful, precisely because the few are strongly, and effectively (given their control of the means of mental production), committed to the denial of (1) and”

Brian Leiter (1963) American philosopher and legal scholar

2
"The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud"

George W. Bush photo

“Again, he violated the one-question rule right off the bat. Obviously, you didn't listen to the will of the people.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

News conference (4 November 2004) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27833-2004Nov5.html
2000s, 2004

Angelique Rockas photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Ai Weiwei photo
Vladimir Putin photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Max Barry photo
Peter Tatchell photo

“Debates and parliamentary divisions are fruitless cosmetic exercises given the Tories' present Commons majority. And if we recognise this, we are either forced to accept Tory edicts as a fait accompli or we must look to new more militant forms of extra-Parliamentary opposition which involve mass popular participation and challenge the Government's right to rule.”

Peter Tatchell (1952) British gay rights activist

Article in London Labour Briefing, November 1981. When quoted in the House of Commons, Labour Party leader Michael Foot denounced him as the Labour candidate for Bermondsey. Source: Tatchell, The Battle for Bermondsey (Heretic Books, 1983) page 53.

Joel Spolsky photo

“Remember, just because Microsoft can do something, doesn't mean you can. Microsoft makes their own gravity. Normal rules don't apply to them.”

Joel Spolsky (1965) American blogger

"Our .NET Strategy" http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Our.NetStrategy.html

Victor Davis Hanson photo
Iain Banks photo
Lal Bahadur Shastri photo
William Howard Taft photo

“No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Quoted in Robert J. Schoenberg (1992), Mr. Capone, apparently referring to the temperance movement.
Attributed

Clementine Ford (writer) photo

“[T]he rules are different for you and always will be; that you must be composed at all times and never scrap in the muck laid down by your opponents because your moral purity is measured differently to theirs.”

Clementine Ford (writer) (1981) Australian feminist writer, broadcaster and public speaker

Clementine Ford: This is the personal price I pay for speaking out online http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/clementine-ford-this-is-the-personal-price-i-pay-for-speaking-out-online-20170713-gxaa6z.html, July 13 2017, in the Sydney Morning Herald
2017

Guy De Maupassant photo
Edmund Landau photo
Natalie Merchant photo
Niall Ferguson photo
Michael Collins (Irish leader) photo

“The European War, which began in 1914, is now generally recognized to have been a war between two rival empires, an old one and a new, the new becoming such a successful rival of the old, commercially and militarily, that the world-stage was, or was thought to be, not large enough for both. Germany spoke frankly of her need for expansion, and for new fields of enterprise for her surplus population. England, who likes to fight under a high-sounding title, got her opportunity in the invasion of Belgium. She was entering the war 'in defense of the freedom of small nationalities'. America at first looked on, but she accepted the motive in good faith, and she ultimately joined in as the champion of the weak against the strong. She concentrated attention upon the principle of self-determination and the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed. "Shall", asked President Wilson, "the military power of any small nation, or group of nations, be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?" But the most flagrant instance of violation of this principle did not seem to strike the imagination of President Wilson, and he led the American nation- peopled so largely by Irish men and women who had fled from British oppression- into the battle and to the side of the nation that for hundreds of years had determined the fortunes of the Irish people against their wish, and had ruled them, and was still ruling them, by no other right than the right of force.”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

A Path to Freedom (2010), p. 38

Hermann Rauschning photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
André Maurois photo
William Hazlitt photo
Septimius Severus photo
Pierre de Coubertin photo
Iain Banks photo
Scott Ritter photo
Warren Farrell photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“The rights to life, liberty and property were not meant to be subject to the vagaries of majority rule.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Life, Liberty, and Property,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=497 WorldNetDaily.com and Taki’s Magazine, May 15, 2009.
2000s, 2009

Julia Gillard photo

“It did seem to me that tomorrow you could wake up to anything, and that there just are no rules anymore.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

The Killing Season, Episode three: The Long Shadow (2010–13)

Prem Rawat photo
Geert Wilders photo
Terry Goodkind photo
Martin Sheen photo
Albert Einstein photo

“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.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)

Jefferson Davis photo

“Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.”

Marvin Bell (1937) Poet

"Thirty-two Statements About Writing Poetry" http://www.coppercanyonpress.org/400_opportunities/430_gettingpub/bell.cfm, statement # 5, The Writer's Chronicle, Commemorative Issue (Copper Canyon Press, 2002).

Vladimir Lenin photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Heinrich Mann photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Ihara Saikaku photo
Robert A. Dahl photo
Glen Cook photo
Irvine Welsh photo
Doug McIlroy photo

“The notion of "intricate and beautiful complexities" is almost an oxymoron. Unix programmers vie with each other for "simple and beautiful" honors — a point that's implicit in these rules, but is well worth making overt.”

Doug McIlroy (1932) American computer scientist, mathematician, engineer, and programmer

Doug McIlroy (2003). The Art of Unix Programming: Basics of the Unix Philosophy http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html

Benjamin N. Cardozo photo

“The second corruption of the state is oligarchy (oligos = few), in which the military elite is narrowed down to a few ruling families of immense wealth and prestige, who now openly flaunt their wealth and possessions.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

The Drunken Helmsman, p. 97
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

Jesse Ventura photo
Benjamin N. Cardozo photo
Theodor Mommsen photo

“He accustomed the people to the fact that one man was the foremost in all things, and threw the lax and lame administration of the senatorial college into the shade by the vigour and dexterity of his personal rule. ]]”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

He knew neither the art of gaining his antagonists, nor that of keeping his own party in subjection
Vol. 3, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
On Gaius Marius
The History of Rome - Volume 3

Rand Paul photo

“We have people coming in by the millions…Am I absolutely opposed to immigration? No…We have to find a way to believe in the rule of law, believe in border control and at the same time, not villify the issue.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

Speaking in Paducah, 2009-05-09
Rand Paul set to launch Senate campaign
KY Wordsmith
http://kywordsmith.com/#/rand-paul-issues/4533680792
2010-11-17
2000s

Peter D. Schiff photo
James Comey photo
Samuel Bowles photo
Eugene V. Debs photo
Jeff Sessions photo

“We don't pay judges to think; we pay judges to rule on the law.”

Jeff Sessions (1946) Former United States Attorney General

Regarding judicial activism while debating on the Senate floor on 06 June 2005 regarding the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to the federal judiciary.
Attributed

Charles Sanders Peirce photo

“The Protestant churches generally hold that the elements of the sacrament are flesh and blood only in a tropical sense; they nourish our souls as meat and the juice of it would our bodies. But the Catholics maintain that they are literally just that; although they possess all the sensible qualities of wafer-cakes and diluted wine. But we can have no conception of wine except what may enter into a belief, either —
# That this, that, or the other, is wine; or,
# That wine possesses certain properties.
Such beliefs are nothing but self-notifications that we should, upon occasion, act in regard to such things as we believe to be wine according to the qualities which we believe wine to possess. The occasion of such action would be some sensible perception, the motive of it to produce some sensible result. Thus our action has exclusive reference to what affects the senses, our habit has the same bearing as our action, our belief the same as our habit, our conception the same as our belief; and we can consequently mean nothing by wine but what has certain effects, direct or indirect, upon our senses; and to talk of something as having all the sensible characters of wine, yet being in reality blood, is senseless jargon. Now, it is not my object to pursue the theological question; and having used it as a logical example I drop it, without caring to anticipate the theologian's reply. I only desire to point out how impossible it is that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things. Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects; and if we fancy that we have any other we deceive ourselves, and mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself. It is absurd to say that thought has any meaning unrelated to its only function. It is foolish for Catholics and Protestants to fancy themselves in disagreement about the elements of the sacrament, if they agree in regard to all their sensible effects, here or hereafter.
It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The final sentence here is an expression of what became known as the Pragmatic maxim, first published in "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" in Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 12 (January 1878), p. 286

“The Musalman invasion of the Brahmaputra valley was repeated on several occasions during the next five centuries of Muslim rule over north India, but most of these expeditions ended in disaster and Islam failed to make any inroads into the valley.”

Ram Gopal (1925) Indian author and historian

Quoted from S.R. Goel, (1994) Heroic Hindu resistance to Muslim invaders, 636 AD to 1206 AD.
Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D.

Klaus Kinski photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Amir Taheri photo
Ken MacLeod photo
Zack de la Rocha photo

“Fools follow rules when the set commands you.”

Zack de la Rocha (1970) American musician, poet rapper and activist best known as the vocalist and lyricist of rap metal band Rage Again…

Bullet in the Head.
Song lyrics, Rage Against the Machine (1992)

Alan Charles Kors photo
Simon Stevin photo

“The seventh Definition. The Golden Rule, or Rule of three, is that by which to three tearmes given, the fourth proportionall tearme is found.”

Simon Stevin (1548–1620) Flemish scientist, mathematician and military engineer

Disme: the Art of Tenths, Or, Decimall Arithmetike (1608)

Eben Moglen photo

“The Entertainment Industry on Planet Earth had decided that in order to acquire Layer 7 Data Security, it was necessary to lock up layers 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 so that no technological progress could occur without their permission. This was known by the IT Industry and the Consumer Electronics Industry on the planet to be offensive nonsense, but there was no counterweight to it, and there was no organised consumer dissent sufficient to require them to stand up for technical merit and their own right to run their own businesses without dictation from companies a tenth their size. Not surprisingly, since it is part of the role we play in this political power concentrated in poverty, humility, and sanctity, we brought them to a consensus they were unable to bring themselves to - which is represented in the license by a rule which fundamentally says "If you want to experiment with locking down layer below 7 in the pursuit of data networks inside businesses that keep the business's data at home, you may do so freely, we have no objection - not only do we have no objection to you doing it, we've no objection to your using our parts to do it with. But when you use our parts to build machines which control peoples' daily lives - which provide them with education and culture, build devices which are modifiable by them to the same extent that they're modifiable by you. That's all we want. If you can modify the device after you give it to them, then they must be able to modify the device after you give it to them - that's a price for using our parts. That's a deal which has been accepted.”

Eben Moglen (1959) American law professor and free software advocate

Talk titled The Global Software Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3, Edinburgh, Scotland, June 26, 2007 http://www.archive.org/details/EbenMoglenLectureEdinburghJune2007text.

John Perry Barlow photo

“Everyone seems to be playing well within the boundaries of his usual rule set. I have yet to hear anyone say something that seemed likely to mitigate the idiocy of this age.”

John Perry Barlow (1947–2018) American poet and essayist

On The International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism, and Security - Personal blog http://barlow.typepad.com/ from Madrid, Spain (10 March 2005)

Samuel Butler photo
Adolf Galland photo

“"He who wants to protect everything, protects nothing," is one of the fundamental rules of defense.”

Adolf Galland (1912–1996) German World War II general and fighter pilot

Quoted in "The First and the Last," 1954.
The First and the Last (1954)

William Penn photo

“No men, nor number of men upon earth, hath power or authority to rule over men's consciences in religious matters.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

Sometimes attributed to Penn, this is actually from a document Concessions and Agreements of West New Jersey http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/organic/1677-cnj.htm (13 March 1677)
Misattributed