Quotes about ruling
page 34

Joseph H. Hertz photo

“Because man is endowed with Reason, he can subdue his impulses in the service of moral and religious ideals, and is born to bear rule over Nature.”

Joseph H. Hertz (1872–1946) British rabbi

Genesis I, 26 (p. 5)
The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (one-volume edition, 1937, ISBN 0-900689-21-8

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Robert Fripp photo

“A principle is universal, a rule is inflexible, a law is invariable.”

Robert Fripp (1946) English guitarist, composer and record producer

The Six Principles of the Performance Event

Rosa Luxemburg photo
Francis Bacon photo
Richard Cobden photo

“I have generally made it a rule to parry the inquiries and comparisons which the Americans are so apt to thrust at an Englishman. On one or two occasions, when the party has been numerous and worth powder and shot, I have, however, on being hard pressed, and finding my British blood up, found the only mode of allaying their inordinate vanity to be by resorting to this mode of argument:—"I admit all that you or any other person can, could, may, or might advance in praise of the past career of the people of America. Nay, more, I will myself assert that no nation ever did, and in my opinion none ever will, achieve such a title to respect, wonder, and gratitude in so short a period; and further still, I venture to allege that the imagination of statesmen never dreamed of a country that should in half a century make such prodigious advances in civilization and real greatness as yours has done. And now I must add, and I am sure you, as intelligent, reasonable men, will go with me, that fifty years are too short a period in the existence of nations to entitle them to the palm of history. No, wait the ordeal of wars, distresses, and prosperity (the most dangerous of all), which centuries of duration are sure to bring to your country. These are the test, and if, many ages hence, your descendants shall be able only to say of their country as much as I am entitled to say of mine now, that for seven hundred years we have existed as a nation constantly advancing in liberty, wealth, and refinement; holding out the lights of philosophy and true religion to all the world; presenting mankind with the greatest of human institutions in the trial by jury; and that we are the only modern people that for so long a time withstood the attacks of enemies so heroically that a foreign foe never put foot in our capital except as a prisoner (this last is a poser);—if many centuries hence your descendants will be entitled to say something equivalent to this, then, and not till then, will you be entitled to that crown of fame which the historian of centuries is entitled to award."”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. Cobden (5 July 1835) during his visit to the United States, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), pp. 33-34.
1830s

Albert Jay Nock photo
Stephen Vizinczey photo
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus photo

“Such was the character, such the inflexible rule of austere Cato – to observe moderation and hold fast to the limit, to follow nature, to give his life for his country, to believe that he was born to serve the whole world and not himself.”
Hi mores, haec duri inmota Catonis secta fuit, servare modum finemque tenere naturamque sequi patriaeque inpendere vitam nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo.

Book II, line 380 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

Adlai Stevenson photo
James Martin (priest) photo
Benjamin N. Cardozo photo
Joan Slonczewski photo

“If every planet in the Patriarchy refused to be ruled, we all would be free.”

Part 6, “The Last Door” - Chapter 15 (p. 363)
A Door into Ocean (1986)

Adolf Hitler photo
John Knox photo
Richard T. Ely photo
Tim Buck photo

“Draw Dyrnwyn, only thou of noble worth, to rule with justice, to strike down evil. Who wields it in good cause shall slay even the Lord of Death.”

The runic inscription upon the scabbard of Dyrnwyn, correctly read by the bard Taliesin, in Chapter 19
The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968)

Learned Hand photo

“For myself it would be most irksome to be ruled by a bevy of Platonic Guardians, even if I knew how to choose them, which I assuredly do not.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

The Bill of Rights (1958), p. 73.
Extra-judicial writings

Jean Paul Sartre photo

“In some places the metropolis makes do with paying a clique of feudal overlords; in others, it has fabricated a fake bourgeoisie of colonized subjects in a system of divide and rule; elsewhere, it has killed two birds with one stone: the colony is both settlement and exploitation.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Source: Preface to The Wretched of the Earth (1961), p. xlvi

Khalil Gibran photo
Manuel Valls photo

“I say also: watch (…) to any signs that would suggest that there a disempowerment. That those who plunge into Salafism are somehow victims of a great handling as regards sects. No, there is also that part of personal will that you should never rule out.”

Manuel Valls (1962) French Socialist Party (PS) politician

Valls: French Muslims to conduct “all over” the fight against Salafism http://www.archyxx.com/valls-french-muslims-to-conduct-all-over-the-fight-against-salafism/, Archyxx. (July 20, 2016)

Neville Chamberlain photo
Kent Hovind photo
Clive Barker photo

“She told him she made a rule of never marrying bankers. The next day he sent flowers, and a note saying that he’d relinquished his profession.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Part Eleven “The Dream Season”, Chapter ii “Representations”, Section 2 (p. 479)
(1987), BOOK THREE: OUT OF THE EMPTY QUARTER

Sun Myung Moon photo

“It is generally assumed that men are damaged in their capacity for closeness and intimacy. If intimacy is defined as a loving closeness with another person, then it is usually true that the early conditioning of men to be performers and competitors in the impersonal competitive world limits their intimacy capacity. Women are assumed to have a greater capacity for intimacy than men because they express caring emotions and allow themselves to be dependent and close in relationships more easily. Yet, a closer look will provide a different perspective.

True intimacy is love and closeness based on knowledge of the inner reality and inner experience of the other. However, in romantic relationships, closeness ends or is put into crisis when men describe honestly their inner experiences to women. Women assail the relationship behavior of men and men acknowledge what they are told. Rarely is the opposite true. Men accept the reality of women more than women accept the reality of men.

The fact that a woman's priority is placed on personal needs bears no relationship to a genuine capacity for intimacy. To be loved and known, and to be fully comfortable expressing one's personal self, are two major components of intimacy. There are few men who have received that from a woman. The opposite holds true. A woman's love for a man is contingent on his participating in her romantic fantasy of what he and the relationship should be. Few men risk challenging or undermining that fantasy. Instead, they play by the rules of romance even when it feels uncomfortable, knowing that being loved by her is fragile and easily broken once he reveals his resistances and unromantic feelings.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Why Women Are Also Incapable of Intimacy, pp. 120–121
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Lord Randolph Churchill photo

“There's a rule they don't teach you at the Harvard Business School. It is, if anything is worth doing, it's worth doing to excess.”

Edwin H. Land (1909–1991) American scientist and inventor

Comment after a 1977 Polaroid shareholder's meeting, as quoted in The Icarus Paradox : How Exceptional Companies Bring About Their Own Downfall; New Lessons in the Dynamics of Corporate Success, Decline, and Renewal (1990) by Danny Miller, p. 126

Babe Ruth photo
Thomas Little Heath photo

“Diophantos lived in a period when the Greek mathematicians of great original power had been succeeded by a number of learned commentators, who confined their investigations within the limits already reached, without attempting to further the development of the science. To this general rule there are two most striking exceptions, in different branches of mathematics, Diophantos and Pappos. These two mathematicians, who would have been an ornament to any age, were destined by fate to live and labour at a time when their work could not check the decay of mathematical learning. There is scarcely a passage in any Greek writer where either of the two is so much as mentioned. The neglect of their works by their countrymen and contemporaries can be explained only by the fact that they were not appreciated or understood. The reason why Diophantos was the earliest of the Greek mathematicians to be forgotten is also probably the reason why he was the last to be re-discovered after the Revival of Learning. The oblivion, in fact, into which his writings and methods fell is due to the circumstance that they were not understood. That being so, we are able to understand why there is so much obscurity concerning his personality and the time at which he lived. Indeed, when we consider how little he was understood, and in consequence how little esteemed, we can only congratulate ourselves that so much of his work has survived to the present day.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

Historical Introduction, p.17
Diophantos of Alexandria: A Study in the History of Greek Algebra (1885)

Amir Taheri photo
John Steinbeck photo
Jerome David Salinger photo

“Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.”

Mr. Spencer
Source: The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Chapter 2

Otto von Bismarck photo

“Concerning the blunders which had been made in our foreign policy public opinion is, as a rule, first enlightened when it is in a position to look back upon the history of a generation, and the Achivi qui plectuntur are not always immediately contemporary with the mistaken actions.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

The Kaiser vs. Bismarck. Suppressed Letters by the Kaiser and New Chapters from the Autobiography of the Iron Chancellor. Translated by Bernard Miall. Harper New York & London 1921,
Original: (de) Ueber die Fehler, welche in der auswärtigen Politik begangen wurden, wird sich die öffentliche Meinung in der Regel erst klar, wenn sie auf die Geschichte eines Menschenalters zurückzublicken im Stande ist, und die Achivi qui plectuntur sind nicht immer die unmittelbaren Zeitgenossen der fehlerhaften Handlungen.
Source: p. 183 archive.org http://archive.org/stream/kaiservsbismarck00bismuoft#page/n223. Achivi qui plectuntur refers to the proverbial verse "Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi" from Horace's Epistles Liber I Epistula II la.wikisource http://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Epistulae_(Horatius)_-_Liber_I: Whatever their kings are raging the Achaeans have to pay for.

Source: Otto von Bismarck: Gedanken und Erinnerungen chapter 12 zeno.org http://www.zeno.org/nid/20002732971

John Lancaster Spalding photo

“Base thy life on principle, not on rules.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 199

Jay Gould photo
James Thomson (poet) photo
John Ralston Saul photo
Iain Banks photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“We live under majority rule and if that majority is not well educated in its responsibilities, the whole Nation suffers.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1960, Speech at East Los Angeles College Stadium, Los Angeles, California

Theodor Mommsen photo

“The earliest achievement of this (of equality and the restriction on the powers of the constitutionally mandated magistrates), the most ancient opposition in Rome, consisted in the abolition of the life-tenure of the presidency of the community; in other words, in the abolition of the monarchy… Not only in Rome (but all over the Italian peninsula) … we find the rulers for life of an earlier epoch superseded in after times by annual magistrates. In this light the reasons which led to the substitution of the consuls for kings in Rome need no explanation. The organism of the ancient Greek and Italian polity through its own action and by a sort of natural necessity produced the limitation of the life-presidency to a shortened, and for the most part an annual, term… Simple, however, as was the cause of the change, it might be brought about in various ways, resolution (of the community),.. or the rule might voluntarily abdicate; or the people might rise in rebellion against a tyrannical ruler, and expel him. It was in this latter way that the monarchy was terminated in Rome. For however much the history of the expulsion of the last Tarquinius, "the proud", may have been interwoven with anecdotes and spun out into a romance, it is not in its leading outlines to be called in question. Tradition credibly enough indicates as the causes of the revolt, that the king neglected to consult the senate and to complete its numbers; that he pronounced sentences of capital punishment and confiscation without advising with his counsellors(sic); that he accumulated immense stores of grain in his granaries, and exacted from the burgesses military labours and task-work beyond what was due… we are (in light of the ignorance of historical facts around the abolition of the monarchy) fortunately in possession of a clearer light as to the nature of the change which was made in the constitution (after the expulsion of the monarchy). The royal power was by no means abolished, as is shown by the fact that, when a vacancy occurred, a "temporary king" (Interrex) was nominated as before. The one life-king was simply replaced by two [one year] kings, who called themselves generals (praetores), or judges…, or merely colleagues (Consuls) [literally, "Those who leap or dance together"]. The collegiate principle, from which this last - and subsequently most current - name of the annual kings was derived, assumed in their case an altogether peculiar form. The supreme power was not entrusted to the two magistrates conjointly, but each consul possessed and exercised it for himself as fully and wholly as it had been possessed and exercised by the king; and, although a partition of functions doubtless took place from the first - the one consul for instance undertaking the command of the army, and the other the administration of justice - that partition was by no means binding, and each of the colleagues was legally at liberty to interfere at any time in the province of the other.”

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

Vol. 1, Book II , Chapter 1. "Change of the Constitution" Translated by W.P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 1

Swami Vivekananda photo
Robert Jordan photo

“Let the lord of chaos rule.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Taim
(11 October 2005)

Paul Krugman photo
Gerald Ford photo

“It is good to be back in the People's House. But this cannot be a real homecoming. Under the Constitution, I now belong to the executive branch. The Supreme Court has even ruled that I am the executive branch — head, heart, and hand.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Source: 1970s, Address to Congress (12 August 1974)

“Every rule may be waived by the person for whose benefit it is introduced.”

William Henry Ashurst (judge) (1725–1807) English judge

Bickerdike v. Bollman (1787), 1 T. R. 405.

Vernon L. Smith photo

“Solutions require thinking through a series of interrelated steps or stages, analyzing a number of rules at each point, and always keeping in mind conclusions reached at earlier points.”

Harold Kelley (1921–2003) American psychologist & academic

Harold Kelley and John W. Thibaut. "Group problem solving." The handbook of social psychology 4 (1969): 1-101; p. 69-70

George H. W. Bush photo
Dara Shukoh photo
Eugene V. Debs photo
Didier Sornette photo

“Knowledge is encoded in models. Models are synthetic sets of rules, and pictures, and algorithms providing us with useful representations of the world of our perceptions and of their patterns.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 5, Modeling Financial Bubbles And Market Crashes, p. 134.

Norodom Sihanouk photo

“For God's sake! If I ran a dictatorship, then what is Lon Nol running? I renounced my throne to show the masses that there's no such thing as divine right, that no one descends from the heavens to rule the people.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Said during his exile in Peking, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci (June 1973), Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011). page 116.
Interviews

Maimónides photo

“The reason of a commandment, whether positive or negative, is clear, and its usefulness evident, if it directly tends to remove injustice, or to teach good conduct that furthers the well-being of society, or to impart a truth which ought to be believed either on its own merit or as being indispensable for facilitating the removal of injustice or the teaching of good morals. There is no occasion to ask for the object of such commandments; for no one can, e. g., be in doubt as to the reason why we have been commanded to believe that God is one; why we are forbidden to murder, steal, and to take vengeance, or to retaliate, or why we are commanded to love one another. But there are precepts concerning which people are in doubt, and of divided opinions, some believing they are mere commands, and serve no purpose whatever, whilst others believe that they serve a certain purpose, which, however is unknown to man. Such are those precepts which in their literal meaning do not seem to further any of the three above-named results: to impart some truth, to teach some moral, or to remove injustice. They do not seem to have any influence upon the well-being of the soul by imparting any truth, or upon the well-being of the body by suggesting such ways and rules as are useful in the government of a state, or in the management of a household. …I will show that all these and similar laws must have some bearing upon one of the following three things, viz., the regulation of our opinions, or the improvement of our social relations, which implies two things, the removal of injustice, and the teaching of good morals.”

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.28

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Ferdinand Foch photo

“In tactics, action is the governing rule of war.”

Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929) French soldier and military theorist

Source: Precepts and Judgments (1919), p. 79

George Pólya photo
Yitzhak Rabin photo
James Thurber photo

“The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.”

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

"The Duchess and the Bugs", 'Lanterns & Lances (1961). The piece was "a response" to an award Thurber received from the Ohioana Library Association in 1953.
From Lanterns and Lances‎

Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
Daniel McCallum photo

“Collisions between fast and slow trains, moving in the same direction, are prevented by the application of the following rule: The conductor of a slow train will report himself to the Superintendent of Division immediately on arrival at a station where, by the time-table, he should be overtaken by a faster train; and he shall not leave that station until the fast train passes, without special orders from the Superintendent of Division.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Source: Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856), p. 45: Cited in: "Railway Engineering in the United States" in The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858. p. 651

“But, Roman, thou, do thou control
The nations far and wide;
Be this thy genius, to impose
The rule of peace on vanquished foes,
Show pity to the humbled soul,
And crush the sons of pride.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VI, pp. 225–226

Báb photo
Robert Pinsky photo

“There are no rules but uniformity can make it seem as though there are rules.”

Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

Singing School

Jimmy Buffett photo
John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge photo

“I think there should be no occasion on which it is absolutely, as a point or rule of law, impossible for a man to redeem his character.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

In re Brandreth (1891), L. J. 60 Q. B. D. 504.

Alexander Fraser Tytler photo

“It is not, perhaps, unreasonable to conclude, that a pure and perfect democracy is a thing not attainable by man, constituted as he is of contending elements of vice and virtue, and ever mainly influenced by the predominant principle of self-interest. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted, that there never was that government called a republic, which was not ultimately ruled by a single will, and, therefore, (however bold may seem the paradox,) virtually and substantially a monarchy.”

Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813) Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian

[Universal History: From the Creation of the World to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I, Book II, Chapter 6, 216, Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser, Petridge and Company, 1854, http://books.google.com/books?id=6FKHIeUQ2J0C&pg=PA216&vq=It+is+not,+perhaps,+unreasonable+to+conclude,+that+a+pure+and+perfect+democracy&source=gbs_search_r&cad=1_1]

Confucius photo
Plutarch photo
Harlan F. Stone photo

“Thus viewed, law as it exists in the modern community may be conveniently, although perhaps not comprehensively, defined as the sum total of all those rules of conduct for which there is state sanction.”

Harlan F. Stone (1872–1946) United States federal judge

Law and its Administration http://books.google.com/books?id=_VUf45FZR7cC&pg=PA3&dq=%22Law+as+it+exists+in+the+modern+community%22&hl=en&ei=uCLsTKahLYSs8AbQ5dWIAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Law%20as%20it%20exists%20in%20the%20modern%20community%22&f=false (1915), p. 3.

G. K. Chesterton photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Joyce Brothers photo
Elliott Smith photo

“The scraping subjects, ruled by fear, they told mewhiskey works better than beer.”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

King's Crossing.
Lyrics, From a Basement on the Hill (posthumous, 2004)

Marco Girolamo Vida photo

“With gay descriptions sprinkle here and there
Some grave instructive sentences with care,
That touch on life, some moral good pursue,
And give us virtue in a transient view;
Rules, which the future sire may make his own,
And point the golden precepts to his son.”

Saepe etiam memorandum inter ludicra memento, Permiscere aliquid breviter, mortalia corda Quod moveat, tangens humanae commoda vitae, Qodque olim jubeant natos meminisse parentes.

Marco Girolamo Vida (1485–1566) Italian bishop

Book II, line 278
De Arte Poetica (1527)

Charles Taze Russell photo
Dorothy Day photo

“Our rule is the works of mercy… It is the way of sacrifice, worship, a sense of reverence.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

As quoted in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History (1997)
As quoted in The Catholic Worker after Dorothy : Practicing the Works of Mercy in a New Generation (2008) by Dan McKanan
Variant: [Practicing] the works of mercy … is our program, our rule of life.

Max Horkheimer photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Henry Calvert Simons photo
Kenneth Arrow photo
George Howard Earle, Jr. photo
Frank Wilczek photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Ma Fuxiang photo
David A. Dodge photo

“We have seen it other places, that equivalent of religious zeal leading to flouting of the law in a way that could lead to death … Inevitably, when you get that fanaticism, if you will, you’re going to have trouble. … Are we collectively as a society willing to allow the fanatics to obstruct the general will of the population? That then turns out to be a real test of whether we actually do believe in the rule of law.”

David A. Dodge (1943) Canadian economist

About the Trans Mountain Pipeline, as quoted in People 'are going to die' protesting Trans Mountain pipeline: Former Bank of Canada governor https://edmontonjournal.com/business/energy/people-are-going-to-die-protesting-trans-mountain-pipeline-former-bank-of-canada-governor (June 13, 2018) by Gordon Kent, Edmonton Journal.

Bidhan Chandra Roy photo

“Along with independence of India from the colonial rule, physical and mental development of masses is necessary for rebuilding the nation”

Bidhan Chandra Roy (1882–1962) Former Chief Minister of West Bengal, India

Above three quotes in Bharat Ratna Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, 10 December 2013, Global Politician http://www.globalpolitician.com/default.asp?26949-india-bc-roy-independence,