Universal Rules Quotes

An ethic is not international until it is internationally acknowledged and practiced as the rule, exceptions to which are visited with disgrace if not with punishment.

All things obey fixed laws.

Given the international nature of the tanker industry, it is important that global regimes are applied consistently and universally, not local or regional rules that do not recognise the total commercial and operating backdrop.

We live in an in-between universe where things change all right...but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature.

The Universe is very, very big. It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules. Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever. Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies. Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.

Science does not permit exceptions.

Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same, and everywhere one and the same in her efficacy and power of action: that is, nature's laws and ordinances, whereby all things come to pass and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's universal laws and rules.

Rules matter, and to be rules they need to be universal in form: always do this, never do that. But it is foolish to rule out in advance the possibility that an occasion might arise when normal rules just don't apply. Rules are not there to be broken, but sometimes break them we must.

Understanding the laws of nature does not mean that we are immune to their operations.

The economic world, like the physical world, has its laws. We may misunderstand them, but we cannot escape them. Sometimes they act with us, sometimes against us. They please us, but they never consider us. It is for us to consider them.

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. As in other sciences, so in politics, it is impossible that all things should be precisely set down in writing; for enactments must be universal, but actions are concerned with particulars. Hence we infer that sometimes and in certain cases laws may be changed.

Kant taught us that we should follow just those rules of conduct that we would want everybody to follow. Few find this generalization of The Golden Rule a great help.

Mathematics is universal. It's discovered by human beings, but the rules of mathematics are the same throughout the universe and the laws of the universe.

There is a maxim about the universe which I always tell my students: That which is not explicitly forbidden is guaranteed to occur.