Quotes About Rules

Power is a concept that belongs only in finite play.

They are valid only if and when players freely play by them.

The agreement of the players to the applicable rules constitutes the ultimate validation of those rules.

Just as it is essential for a finite game to have a definitive ending, it must also have a precise beginning. Therefore, we can speak of finite games as having temporal boundaries—to which, of course, all players must agree. But players must agree to the establishment of spatial and numerical boundaries as well. That is, the game must be played within a marked area, and with specified players.

What is preserved by the constancy of numerical boundaries, of course, is the possibility that all contestants can agree on an eventual winner.

The rules of an infinite game must change in the course of play. The rules are changed when the players of an infinite game agree that the play is imperiled by a finite outcome—that is, by the victory of some players and the defeat of others. The

If finite games must be externally bounded by time, space, and number, they must also have internal limitations on what the players can do to and with each other. To agree on internal limitations is to establish rules of play.

It is convenient to think that sexual misfits violate rules. The matter is subtler by far. They are not concerned to oppose the rules themselves but to engage in competitive struggle by way of those rules. Sexual attractiveness, or sexiness, is effective only to the degree that someone is offended by it.

This does not mean that infinite players are politically disengaged; it means rather that they are political without having a politics, a paradoxical position easily misinterpreted. To have a politics is to have a set of rules by which one attempts to reach a desired end; to be political—in the sense meant here—is to recast rules in the attempt to eliminate all societal ends, that is, to maintain the essential fluidity of human association.

Cowboys of the Old West were workers, not gunslingers, and they did not go looking for trouble. But when trouble found them, the rules were unequivocal. If someone was killed in a fair fight, that was not murder, it was an incident. On the other hand, shooting an unarmed or fleeing man ~ even if he was a sworn enemy ~ was strictly forbidden, and transgressors were quickly brought to frontier justice.

Political correctness is a loaded gun that the individual holds to their own head. Where laws can't stomp on freedom of speech, automatons rule other automatons via political correctness and social acceptance.

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

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

Yes. Laugh. But there's sense in the old rules. They kept people out of trouble.' He was annoyed because I laughed, and said that a woman in my position needed extra dignity of behaviour. 'What position?' - I was suddenly very angry, because of the trapped feeling women get at such moments.

I prefer a society which accepts that I have no choice, and does not pretend that I have. I prefer a God who does what he wills, and rules as he desires, and enjoins on me not to prevent anything against its destiny.

Francis.… You are St Mary's. You and no other. It sounds trite, but it is precisely true. I don't know your secret. There is no spiritual bond between you and your company: no common faith, no rites, no rules of chivalry. How is it done?' 'Charm of personality,' said Lymond. 'Allied to a generous wage scale.

I'll tell you why, Mr. Pomfret. Because you haven't the guts to say No when somebody asks you to be a sport. That tom-fool word has got more people in trouble than all the rest of the dictionary put together. If it's sporting to encourage girls to break rules and drink more than they can carry and get themselves into a mess on your account, then I'd stop being a sport and try being a gentleman.

To keep something, you must take care of it. More, you must understand just what sort of care it requires. You must know the rules and abide by them.

Of course it isn't. It's just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or — what's that strange thing you British play?" "Er, cricket? Self-loathing?" "Parliamentary democracy.

None of these facts, however strange or inexplicable, is as strange or inexplicable as the rules of the game of Brockian Ultra Cricket, as played in the higher dimensions. A full set of rules is so massively complicated that the only time they were all bound together in a single volume they underwent gravitational collapse and became a Black Hole.

I know that astrology isn't a science," said Gail. "Of course it isn't. It's just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or—what's that strange thing you British play?" "Er, cricket? Self-loathing?" "Parliamentary democracy.

Parents aren't supposed to cry. Or get scared. Or lie. Right? I thought I knew all the rules. But there are no rules.

I don't think the discus will ever attract any interest until they let us start throwing them at one another.

As man has managed to turn himself into a player of the world, the sole thing that can now prevent him from using all his possibilities of playing, is to make him believe that he did not invent the rules of the game.