Quotes about ruling
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William Morris photo

“If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

"The Beauty of Life," a lecture before the Birmingham Society of Arts and School of Design (19 February 1880), later published in Hopes and Fears for Art: Five Lectures Delivered in Birmingham, London, and Nottingham, 1878 - 1881 (1882).

“You can't turn the sheriff into a toad, Hannah. It's against the rules.”

Christine Feehan American writer

Source: Magic in the Wind

Ray Bradbury photo

“I have three rules to live by: Get your work done. If that doesn't work, shut up and drink your gin, and when all else fails, run like hell.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Source: Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews

Lori Foster photo

“love means breaking all the rules”

Lori Foster (1958) American writer

Source: Simon Says

Kim Harrison photo

“Breaking rules isn't bad when what you're doing is more important than the rule itself”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Once Dead, Twice Shy

H.L. Mencken photo

“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

369
Popular version of the first sentence: "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule it."
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Source: Minority Report

Suzanne Collins photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Alexander Pope photo
Kelley Armstrong photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Candace Bushnell photo
James Thurber photo

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

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

“Often it is tenacity, not talent, that rules the day.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

Source: Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance

Edith Wharton photo
Rick Riordan photo

“One basketball to rule them all,” Leo muttered.”

Variant: One basketball to rule them all.
Source: The Mark of Athena

Cinda Williams Chima photo
Rachel Caine photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Richelle Mead photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Richard Rohr photo

“every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

John Steinbeck photo
Carl Sagan photo

“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”

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

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

Octavia E. Butler photo
Marcus Garvey photo

“Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden…”

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur
Gore Vidal photo

“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return …”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: 1970s, Homage to Daniel Shays : Collected Essays (1972), Matters of Fact and Fiction : Essays 1973 - 1976 (1978), p. 280

Greg Behrendt photo
Robert Bringhurst photo
Robert Jordan photo

“The lions sing and the hills take flight.
The moon by day, and the sun by night.
Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool.
Let the Lord of Chaos rule.”

Chant from a children’s game heard in Great Arvalon, the Fourth Age
(15 October 1994)
Source: Lord of Chaos

E.M. Forster photo
Bob Dylan photo

“I think women rule the world, and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Rolling Stone interview (21 June 1984)

Jim Butcher photo
Juan Ramón Jimenéz photo

“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”

Juan Ramón Jimenéz (1881–1958) Spanish poet

As quoted in the epigraph in Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury; Susie Salmon also uses this quote in The Lovely Bones, and Daniel Quinn published a book in 2007 with the title If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways (2007)
Spanish: "Si os dan papel pautado, escribid por el otro lado" (If they give you lined paper, write on the other side)
"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way" is often attributed to William Carlos Williams who was contemporary with JRJ.
Misattributed

Cecelia Ahern photo
Pietro Aretino photo

“I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself.”

Pietro Aretino (1492–1556) Italian author, playwright, poet, satirist, and blackmailer
O. Henry photo

“Write what you like; there is no other rule.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer
Joseph Campbell photo

“Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.”

Episode 2, Chapter 22
Source: The Power of Myth (1988)

Anne Lamott photo

“When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Patrick Rothfuss photo
Megan Whalen Turner photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Warren Buffett photo

“Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

This maxim (perhaps of gambling or horse racing origin) is widely attributed to Warren Buffett and, as such, has traditionally been cited in print; notably, it was attributed (perhaps facetiously) to him by Mary Buffett in, The Tao of Warren Buffett. A more uncommon, less well known version, and perhaps one with a more lasting credibility (or certainly with a higher degree of checkability), would be: "The first rule is don't lose, and the second rule is never forget the first rule." This version was noted by Steve Forbes in a friendly meeting in Omaha, in an article published as: Jay-Z, Buffett and Forbes on Success and Giving Back. This article is available on the Forbes website, published on September 23, 2010.
Disputed
Variant: Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1.

Paulo Coelho photo
Malcolm Gladwell photo
Eric Hoffer photo
Kim Gruenenfelder photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“When I am abroad I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the Government of my country. I make up for lost time when I am at home.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

In the House of Commons (18 April 1947), cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations (1996), Jay, Oxford University Press, p. 93.
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Arthur Conan Doyle photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Richelle Mead photo
Robin S. Sharma photo

“Ancient Rule of Twenty-one: if you do anything for twenty-one days in a row, it will be installed as a habit.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Remarkable Story About Living Your Dreams

Alan Alda photo

“Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.”

Alan Alda (1936) actor and United States Army officer

Source: Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself

Robert Anton Wilson photo
Ravi Zacharias photo
Bob Dylan photo
Mindy Kaling photo
Jeanette Winterson photo

“He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Lisa Scottoline photo
Alberto Manguel photo
William James photo

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

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"The Will to Believe" p. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=Moqh7ktHaJEC&pg=PA10
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Jim Morrison photo
Ken Wilber photo

“I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace.”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

Introduction, Collected Works of Ken Wilber, vol. VIII (2000) http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/cowokev8_intro.cfm/
Context: The real intent of my writing is not to say, you must think in this way. The real intent is: here are some of the many important facets of this extraordinary Kosmos; have you thought about including them in your own worldview? My work is an attempt to make room in the Kosmos for all of the dimensions, levels, domains, waves, memes, modes, individuals, cultures, and so on ad infinitum. I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. To Freudians I say, Have you looked at Buddhism? To Buddhists I say, Have you studied Freud? To liberals I say, Have you thought about how important some conservative ideas are? To conservatives I say, Can you perhaps include a more liberal perspective? And so on, and so on, and so on... At no point I have ever said: Freud is wrong, Buddha is wrong, liberals are wrong, conservatives are wrong. I have only suggested that they are true but partial. My critical writings have never attacked the central beliefs of any discipline, only the claims that the particular discipline has the only truth — and on those grounds I have often been harsh. But every approach, I honestly believe, is essentially true but partial, true but partial, true but partial.
And on my own tombstone, I dearly hope that someday they will write: He was true but partial...

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfilment.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Progress of Culture Phi Beta Kappa Address (July 18, 1867)
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)

Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.”

Vol. 2, Ch. 23, § 296a
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
Source: Counsels and Maxims (The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer)

Cinda Williams Chima photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Edward Bulwer-Lytton photo

“Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.”

Act ii, Scene ii. This is the origin of the much quoted phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword". Compare: "Hinc quam sic calamus sævior ense, patet. The pen worse than the sword", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part i. Sect. 2, Memb. 4, Subsect. 4.
Richelieu (1839)

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Rick Riordan photo
Richard Bach photo
Confucius photo

“I followed my heart without breaking any rules.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
Jeannette Walls photo
Linus Pauling photo

“I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this: "Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you."”

Linus Pauling (1901–1994) American scientist

… The twenty-five percent is for error.
Pauling's reply to an audience question about his ethical system, following his lecture circa 1961 at Monterey Peninsula College, in Monterey, California.
1990s

Glen Cook photo
Michel Houellebecq photo

“The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human.”

Source: The Elementary Particles

Gore Vidal photo
William Golding photo

“The rules!" shouted Ralph, "you're breaking the rules!"
"Who cares?”

Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 5: Beast from Water
Context: "The rules!" shouted Ralph, "you're breaking the rules!"
"Who cares?"
Ralph summoned his wits.
"Because the rules are the only thing we've got!"
But Jack was shouting against him.
"Bollocks to the rules! We're strong — we hunt! If there's a beast, we'll hunt it down! We'll close in and beat and beat and beat —!"

Neal Shusterman photo