It is so hard to make important decisions that we have a great urge to reduce them to rules.

Great books are rare.

In every generation, there are quite firm rules on how to behave when you are crazy.

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.

Every moral teacher or spiritual adviser gives injunctions about how to live wisely and well. But life is so complicated and full of uncertainty that rules seldom tell us quite what to do.

All peoples have evolved extraordinarily precise ways of settling issues about the things that matter to them.