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"By perpetually improvising new, often arbitrary rules of language and belief, ideologues on Twitter generate the in-group of those who willingly abide by those rules by banishing the out-group of those who are either ignorant of the rules or who defy them knowingly. These rules and protocols are sufficiently elaborate and non-intuitive to guarantee that the only people really capable of following them are those who are already intimately acculturated to the particular social milieu from which they stem. Upon those who are in the know is thus conferred a select social status, masquerading as political virtue—not unlike the Calvinists who secured their social prestige by proving their standing among God's favored by way of ostentatious shows of righteous living and religious conviction. It's elitism, but it looks like piety." Leighton Woodhouse   "'Limited government' does not mean government that limits itself; all governments limit themselves at some point. Limited government means government limited by rules that citizens know and can count on. It means a government that revises the rules only in accordance with the rules." Paul Heyne   "An eruption of civilian mass murder requires some prior breakdown in the established customs and habits of society. As Keynes wisely said: 'Civilization is a thin and precarious crust, erected by the personality and will of the few, and only maintained by rules and conventions skilfully put across and guilefully preserved.' The mass military slaughter of the First World War provided the necessary conditions for a breakdown in the 'rules and conventions' of civilization all over Europe. It inflicted sufficient damage on fragile social orders to sweep away restraints against the unbridled exercise of power. It created a moral vacuum in which men without morals could come to power, outcast leaders embodying or exploiting the seething resentments of the losers. And it provided a military model and language that could be suitably adapted to peacetime purpose." Robert Skidelsky   "If the rules apply to one side, they are not rules. They are partisan preferences dressed up as terms and conditions. Once you do away with common standards, you do away with the sense of agreement that underlies them. If there are no neutral spaces in which to debate, a series of self-contained arguments will take place and none of them will enjoy legitimacy." Stephen Daisley   "Honest differences of opinion and principled compromise often seem to be the victim of a determination to score points against one's opponents. But the American people sent us here to be their voice. They understand that those voices can at times become loud and argumentative, but they also hope that we can disagree without being disagreeable. And at the end of the day, they expect both parties to work together to get the people's business done. What they don't expect is for one party—be it Republican or Democrat—to change the rules in the middle of the game so that they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet. The American people want less partisanship in this town, but everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster—if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate—then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse." Barack Obama   "It is an oft-repeated observation that individuals who follow the so-called 'success sequence'—graduate from high school, get married before having children, and work steadily at any job available—are rarely poor. Avoiding addiction and crime improves outcomes even more dramatically. Meeting these demands does not require high intelligence or outstanding academic achievement. Rather, it requires recognizing, believing in, and sticking to a few tried and true 'rules for life.' Average people are especially in need of simple rules and clear guidance to help them navigate the economic challenges they face and forge a path through life's complexities." Amy Wax   "So far from being a set of maxims and rules to be applied without regard to times, places, and circumstances, the function of political economy is to enable us to find the rules which ought to govern any state of circumstances with which we have to deal—circumstances which are never the same in any two cases. I do not know in political economy more than I know in any other art or science a single practical rule that must be applicable to all cases, and I am sure that no one is at all capable of determining what is the right political economy for any country until he knows its circumstances." John Stuart Mill   "We call a law every act of the legislative authority; but only some, today probably a small minority of them, are general rules applying to private persons. The state has its own means which it has to use for common ends, and its own servants to administer these means. It is today everywhere the task of the same legislatures to direct the use of these means, and to lay down general rules which the private citizen must observe. But while the government must administer the means put at its disposal, including the services of all those it has hired to carry out its instructions, this does not mean that it should or may in the same manner 'administer' the efforts of the private citizen." Friedrich Hayek   "Anyone who accidentally creates discomfort—whether through their teaching methods, their editorial standards, their opinions, or their personality—may suddenly find themselves on the wrong side of not just a student or a colleague but an entire bureaucracy, one dedicated to weeding out people who make other people uncomfortable. And these bureaucracies are illiberal. They do not necessarily follow rules of fact-based investigation, rational argument, or due process. Instead, the formal and informal administrative bodies that judge the fate of people who have broken social codes are very much part of a swirling, emotive public conversation, one governed not by the rules of the courtroom or logic or the Enlightenment but by social-media algorithms that encourage anger and emotion, and by the economy of likes and shares that pushes people to feel—and to perform—outrage. The interaction between the angry mob and the illiberal bureaucracy engenders a thirst for blood, for sacrifices to be offered up to the pious and unforgiving gods of outrage—a story we see in other eras of history, from the Inquisition to the more recent past." Anne Applebaum   "Given the incentives politicians face, why should we expect one politician to differ significantly from another? We should focus less on personalities and more on rules. The kind of rules we should have are the kind that we'd make if our worst enemy were in charge." Walter Williams   "Properly understood, the economy has neither purpose, function, or intent. The economy is defined by a structure, a set of rules and institutions, that constrain the choices of many persons in an interlinked chain of game-like interactions, one with another. For any individual, there are, of course, 'better' and 'worse' economies, but these evaluative terms translate directly into references to sets of rules or structures." James Buchanan   "Ethics is not a matter of choice. We have not designed it and cannot design it. And perhaps all that is innate is the fear of the frown and other signs of disapproval of our fellows. The rules which we learn to observe are the result of cultural evolution. We can endeavour to improve the system of rules by seeking to reconcile its internal conflicts or its conflicts with our emotions. But instinct or intuition do not entitle us to reject a particular demand of the prevailing moral code, and only a responsible effort to judge it as part of the system of other requirements may make it morally legitimate to infringe a particular rule." Friedrich Hayek   "The most compelling explanation for the marked shift in the fortunes of the poor is that they continued to respond, as they always had, to the world as they found it, but that we—meaning the not-poor and un-disadvantaged—had changed the rules of their world. Not of our world, just of theirs. The first effect of the new rules was to make it profitable for the poor to behave in the short term in ways that were destructive in the long term. Their second effect was to mask these long term losses—to subsidize irretrievable mistakes. We tried to provide more for the poor and produced more poor instead. We tried to remove the barriers to escape from poverty, and inadvertently built a trap." Charles Murray   "There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community—which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality. Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible. Whoever is burdened with power and responsibility finds out on the first occasion that he has to choose; and he is fatally driven to the second alternative. Do you know, since establishment of Christianity as a state religion, a single example of a state which really followed a Christian policy? You can't point out one. In times of need—and politics are chronically in a time of need—the rules were always able to evoke 'exceptional circumstances,' which demanded exceptional measures of defence." Arthur Koestler   "Civilization largely rests on the fact that the individuals have learnt to restrain their desires for particular objects and to submit to generally recognized rules of just conduct. Majorities, however, have not yet been civilized in this manner because they do not have to obey rules. What would we not all do if we were genuinely convinced that our desire for a particular action proves that it is just?" Friedrich Hayek   "The right rules can harness self-interest and use it to reduce poverty. The wrong rules stifle this force or channel it in ways that harm society." Paul Romer   "He would have the pace of legislation quickened by the abolition of vain debates—he would have justice freed from the shackles of law—he would have public affairs conducted by officers of vast powers, unfettered by routine. He does not know his meaning. He does not see the consequences of his own teaching; and yet he is unconsciously tending to a result logically connected with the whole of it. Freedom, law, established rules, have their difficulties. They are possible only to men who will be patient, quiet, moderate, and tolerant of difference in opinion; and therefore their results are intolerable to a feminine, irritable, noisy mind, which is always clamouring and shrieking for protection and guidance. Mr Dickens's government looks pretty at a distance, but we can tell him how his ideal would look if it were realised. It would result in the purest despotism." James Fitzjames Stephen   "The Founding Fathers, far from being ideologues, were not even politicians. They were an assortment of businessmen, writers, teachers, planters; men, in short, who knew something of the world, which is to say, of Human Nature. Their struggle to draft a set of rules acceptable to each other was based on the assumption that we human beings, in the mass, are no damned good—that we are biddable, easily confused, and that we may easily be motivated by a Politician, which is to say, a huckster, mounting a soapbox and inflaming our passions." David Mamet   "The United States, you see, is the flag of choice for space activities. It is the flag of choice. And with that comes great opportunity but also great responsibility in terms of what course we will chart for the work that happens here on Earth that will then maximize the opportunities in space. So our nation is entering a new era. And that new era includes considering and thinking about our exploration in space, and how we use space, and are we prepared for the possibilities but also the challenges. To that end, we understand that we have got to update the rules, because they're just simply outdated. They were written for a space industry of the last century. And when I was going through here just today, speaking with some of our innovators and looking at where the technology has grown in just the last decade, we know that we really are quite behind in terms of maximizing our collective understanding about how we will engage on the technology of today and what we can quickly and easily predict will be the technology over the next decades. So, to maintain our position as the United States of America on this issue, it is critical that we work together to understand where we are; to recognize and have the courage to speak truth about what is obsolete; and then to partner to ensure that we are speaking the same language, with the same motivation, inspired by the opportunity of it at all, but then doing the work of updating how we have been talking and thinking about our exploration in space." Kamala Harris   "The conquerors of our days, peoples or princes, want their empire to possess a unified surface over which the superb eye of power can wander without encountering any inequality which hurts or limits its view. The same code of law, the same measures, the same rules, and if we could gradually get there, the same language; that is what is proclaimed as the perfection of the social organization." Benjamin Constant