Thumb Rule Quotes & Sayings

The rule of thumb for all news operations is that stories are assigned their importance on the basis of what affects or interests the greatest number of one's readers or viewers. Depending on the nature of the newspaper or broadcast, the balance between what "affects" and what "interests" is quite different. The first criteria of a responsible newspaper such as The New York Times is going to be that which their readers need to know about their world that day - those developments that in one way or another might affect their health, their pocketbooks, the future of themselves and their children. The first criterion of the tabloid is that which "interests" its readers - gossip, sex, scandal. — Walter Cronkite

As a rule of thumb, if the government wants you to know it, it probably isn't true. — Craig Murray

The astronomer's rule of thumb:
if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen — Clifford Stoll

The new rule of thumb is that 80% of a president's time must be spent in raising funds for their schools. — James E. Rogers

Thus the interpretation of dreams, whether by the analyst or by the dreamer himself, is for the Jungian psychologist an entirely personal and individual business (and sometimes an experimental and very lengthy one as well) that can by no means be undertaken by rule of thumb.
The converse of this is that the communications of the unconscious are of the highest importance to the dreamer-naturally so, since the unconscious is at least half of his total being-and frequently offer him advice or guidance that could be obtained from no other source. — C. G. Jung

In doing one's work primarily for God, the fear of undue restriction is put, sooner or later, out of the question. He pays me and He pays me well. He pays me and He will not fail to pay me. He pays me not merely for the rule of thumb task, which is all that men recognize, but to everything else I bring to my job in the way of industry, good intentions and cheerfulness. If the Lord loveth a cheerful giver, as St. Paul says, we may depend upon it that He loveth a cheerful worker; and where we can cleave the way to His love there we find His endless generosity. — Basil King

When you're facing down multiple attackers, you always want to make the first move. It lets them know that you're ready to fight and that you're crazy enough to get the party started. One rule of thumb in fighting is that crazy can often overcome skill and numbers, because, while a trained fighter might actually enjoy going up against another trained fighter, no one really wants to wrestle with crazy. Crazy doesn't know when it's winning. And crazy doesn't know when to stop. If you can't pull off crazy, if, for instance, you're handcuffed in a small van with six armed assailants, stupid is a decent substitute for crazy. — Richard Kadrey

The rule of thumb for the old backpacking was that the weight of your pack should equal the weight of yourself and the kitchen range combined. Just a casual glance at the full pack sitting on the floor could give you a double hernia and fuse four vertebrae. After carrying the pack all day, you had to remember to tie one leg to a tree before you dropped it. Otherwise you would float off into space. The pack eliminated the need for any special kind of ground-gripping shoes, because your feet would sink a foot and a half into hard-packed earth, two inches into solid rock. — Patrick F. McManus

As a general rule of thumb, Democrats do better in national elections when the year's defining issue is economic fairness, and Republicans do better when the defining issue is national security. — Rick Perlstein

Best of all, he gave us a rule of thumb about information in the markets that I later found useful: "Those who say don't know, and those who know don't say. — Michael Lewis

The conventional word that is employed to describe tyranny is "systematic." The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not. (The only rule of thumb was: whatever is not compulsory is forbidden.) Thus, the ruled can always be found to be in the wrong. — Christopher Hitchens

Most bloggers have no institutional credibility, and so they must build it, by linking transparently, and allowing you to easily double check their work. But more than anything, because linking sources is such an easy thing to do, and the motivations for avoiding links are so dubious, I've detected myself using a new rule of thumb: if you don't link to primary sources, I just don't trust you. — Ben Goldacre

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. — Tim O'Brien

From an evolutionary perspective, nothing could be worse for a male than to eliminate his own progeny. It's assumed, therefore, that nature has provided males with a rule of thumb to attack only infants of mothers with whom they have had no recent sex. This may seem foolproof for the males, but it opens the door for a brilliant female counterstrategy. By accepting the advances of many males, a female can buffer herself against infanticide because none of her mates can discard the possibility that her infant is his. In other words, it pays to sleep around. — Frans De Waal

At what age should one marry? As a rule of thumb, perhaps not until you are past the age of feeling strongly that you must marry. — Jo Coudert

The rule of thumb is that you need a day on Earth to recover from each day in space, — Chris Hadfield

As a rule of thumb. Congressional legislation that is bipartisan is usually twice as bad as legislation that is partisan. — Thomas Sowell

But seat-back video screens and the hard frames that surround them pose a safety challenge, partly because of the potential for injuries caused by head strikes, and partly because the computers and the electrical systems that serve them have to be both fireproof and fully isolated from the plane's - so that crossed wires in somebody's seat don't allow a ten-year-old playing a video game to suddenly take control of the cockpit. Largely as a result, in-flight entertainment systems are almost unbelievably expensive. The rule of thumb, I was told, is "a thousand dollars an inch" - meaning that the small screen in the back of each economy seat can cost an airline ten thousand dollars, plus a few thousand for its handheld controller. — Anonymous

A good rule of thumb is to assume that everything matters. — Richard Thaler

Titus, have you ever had your heart broken?"
"Oh, son. How could you ask a man who used to play the blues a question like that?"
"How long does it take to go away?"
"A broken heart?"
"Yeah."
"There's no precise formula, Sammy."
"Just give me an estimate."
"A good rule of thumb is at least half the time that you were in love. Or twice the time. It all just depends. — Zack Love

The classic rule of thumb is that if you are an intellectual ideological magazine, you do better in opposition than you do if your views are reflected by people in power. — John Podhoretz

Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good. — Gabriel Byrne

A rule of thumb for a warrior is that he makes his decisions so carefully that nothing that may happen as a result of them can surprise him, much less drain his power. — Carlos Castaneda

As a rule of thumb, if a verb or phrase is about wishes, emotions, doubt, denial, recommendations, knowledge and understanding, then there's a strong possibility the Subjunctive will follow. — Linda Plummer

As a rule of thumb, it was always safer if the Commander-in-Chief formulated a risky plan. — Rowena Cherry

Real-World Example = Don't constantly complain about the work conditions. (It's too bright, it's too dark, it's too cold, I wish it smelled more like cinnamon.) A simple rule of thumb to remember is, "Unless there's a live cobra in the office, I'll be all right. — Jon Acuff

Here, then, is a simple rule of thumb for all of us to apply: If the words of Jesus challenge something I believe or challenge the way I live, the problem is not with Jesus. The problem is with me. Charles Spurgeon expressed this in broader, scriptural terms when he said, "If there is any verse that you would like left out of the Bible, that is the verse that ought to stick to you, like a blister, until you really attend to its teaching."31 — Michael L. Brown

Here's a good rule of thumb; too clever is dumb. — Ogden Nash

Most people give substantial weight to anecdotal evidence, perhaps so much that it will cancel out positive recommendations found in consumer reports. People's tendency to give undue weight to some types of information is called the availability heuristic. A heuristic is a rule of thumb, a mental shortcut. Suppose someone asked you a question like what's more common in English, words that start with the letter to r words that have t as the third letter. You would have an easier time generating words that started with the letter t. Words starting with t would be more 'available'. — Barry Schwartz

Here's a good rule of thumb: Your own rituals are okay as long as they don't interfere with your responsibilities in daily life, or make you the subject of teasing or ridicule. Rituals become a problem whenever they prevent you from doing the stuff you're supposed to do, or when they get you in trouble. — John Elder Robison

My rule of thumb is that if you spend 2 percent of your nest egg per year, adjusted upward for the cost of living, you are as secure as possible; at 3 percent, you are probably safe; at 4 percent, you are taking real risks; and at 5 percent, you had better like cat food and vacations very close to home. For example, if, in addition to Social Security and pensions, you spend $50,000 per year in living expenses, that means you will need $2.5 million to be perfectly safe, and $1.67 million to be fairly secure. If you have "only" $1.25 million, you are taking chances; if you are starting with $1 million, there is a good chance you will eventually run out of money. — William J. Bernstein

The rule of thumb is that if someone is able to be verbally or physically abusive, he or she is able to understand that the behavior is wrong. — Edward T. Welch

A general rule of thumb is that when the flight crew is paid for one hour, they are actually on duty for three hours. So if a pilot is paid $25 an hour (that is what Delta's Endeavor pays their first year first officers) an hour you would actually divide that number by three to get the real hourly wage of $8.33 an hour. That is less than what fast food workers are paid and they do not have to spend $200,000 learning how to make hamburgers. — Ben Mandell

A simple rule of thumb is to shop the periphery of the grocery store - that's where you'll find meat, fish, dairy, and vegetables. Choose high-quality protein such as healthy, grass-fed beef and lamb and organic chicken and pork, and eat them in moderation. — Suzanne Somers

It's almost a very rough rule of thumb: when Democrats are able to successfully frame the meaning of an election season around middle-class fears, Democrats win the election; when Republicans are able to successfully frame the meaning of an election season around cultural fears, Republicans win the election. — Rick Perlstein

Her freckles were delectable. Most fellows didn't care for freckles as a rule, thinking they were tough-looking. But Betty's were appealing. Like cake batter you could wipe off with your thumb, buttery and sweet. — Katherine Howe

In a household of toddlers and pets, we discover this rule of thumb about happy families - that they are least two-thirds incontinent. — Robert Breault

Hugh Liedtke had a simple rule of thumb: Pick a name that started with either A or Z, so you would be first or last in the telephone listings. With that in mind, the team chose Zapata Petroleum Corporation, after the Marlon Brando movie Viva Zapata!, which was playing in Midland. — Jon Meacham

Four circles to the kissing come, The smaller are the benter. The bend is just the inverse of The distance from the centre. Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb There's now no need for rule of thumb. Since zero bend's a dead straight line And concave bends have minus sign, The sum of squares of all four bends Is half the square of their sum. — Frederick Soddy

Right after 9/11, I mean, every agency can give their own gradation, but a nice, popular rule of thumb is everybody doubled down. I ended up in NSA with about twice as much money as I had prior to 9/11. — Michael Hayden

The truth was I'd given up waiting long ago. The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces. Or better to say, in my face. Grammar of my life: as a rule of thumb, wherever there appears a plural, correct for singular. Should I ever let slip a royal We put me out of my misery with a swift blow to the head. — Nicole Krauss

You know, I think there's a good rule of thumb here: Don't take nutritional advice from other species. — Craig Ferguson

A magician is a rule-of-thumb engineer. — Robert A. Heinlein

Rule of thumb: Eat for what you're going to be doing, and not for what you have done. Don't take in more than you're willing to burn off. — Lee Haney

I think a good rule of thumb for being true to your own convictions is this; don't do or champion anything in the name of a group that you wouldn't do or champion as an individual - for if you do so, you become a chameleon that fades into the colours of group think, and you compromise the autonomy of individuation. — James Knight - The Philosophical Muser

His rule of thumb, after a walk, is to drink water until he begins to urinate again. Then he can consider other activities. — Neal Stephenson

Here's a quick rule of thumb: Don't annoy science fiction writers. These are people who destroy entire planets before lunch. Think of what they'll do to you. — John Scalzi

It's kind of a rule of thumb for me to self-doubt going into any kind of project. I always think that I shouldn't be doing it and I don't know how to do it and I'm going to fail and that I fooled them. I always try to find a way out. — Heath Ledger

As a rule of thumb, I would submit that if you need to call your floss provider, for any reason, you are probably not ready for this level of oral hygiene. — Bill Bryson

I have a rule of thumb that allows me to judge, when times is pressing and one needs to make a snap judgment, whether or not some sexist bullshit is afoot. Obviously, it's not 100% infallible but by and large it definitely points you in the right direction and it's asking this question; are the men doing it? Are the men worrying about this as well? Is this taking up the men's time? Are the men told not to do this, as it's letting the side down? Are the men having to write bloody books about this exasperating retarded, time-wasting, bullshit? Is this making Jeremy Clarkson feel insecure?
Almost always the answer is no. The boys are not being told they have to be a certain way, they are just getting on with stuff. — Caitlin Moran

If you want to be rich the rule of thumb is to teach others how to be rich. — Robert Kiyosaki

"No one is doing what we're doing." This is a bummer of a lie because there are only two logical conclusions. First, no one else is doing this because there is no market for it. Second, the entrepreneur is so clueless that he can't even use Google to figure out he has competition. Suffice it to say that the lack of a market and cluelessness is not conducive to securing an investment. As a rule of thumb, if you have a good idea, five companies are going the same thing. If you have a great idea, fifteen companies are doing the same thing. — Guy Kawasaki

I like working with great talent, in every capacity. I have a rule of thumb, in any creative endeavor - whether I'm doing music and playing in a band, or working with producers, or directing - where I generally like to work with people who are smarter than me or better than me. — Malik Yoba

The way that I've always gone about making music, the rule of thumb, has just been to make what I love. — Amy Lee

I have a rule of thumb now and that's that somebody [she dates] has to have been married and they have to have had kids. Everything boils down to perspective. If your potential mate does not have the same perspective that you do then you're going to be lost ... If somebody has never been married, they don't know compromise ... [and] if they don't have children, they don't know the absolute self-sacrifice it takes and what it means to be a parent. — Eva LaRue

A bishop friend who is known for his advocacy of controversial positions says his rule of thumb when uncertain about which course to choose is "Go with the future." Had he lived in Germany in 1932 and followed that rule of thumb he would have been a spirited supporter of Adolf Hitler. There is no "future" to guide our present decisions. There are only possible futures that we can strive to advance or resist. More precisely, there is no "future" until it happens, and then it is fleetingly the present on its way to becoming the past. Yet we persist in trying to dismiss proposals labeled as conservative because, we confidently proclaim, they are not of the future but of the past ... The commandments of the future are easier, of course, because we can make them up to our liking. — Richard John Neuhaus

I used to think that pain was my body's way of telling me something was wrong. Now I think that while that is sometimes true, more often pain is some little bit of my body bitching about being asked to do something it doesn't want to, but once it figures out that I'm serious, it shuts up and delivers. My new rule of thumb is that if something hurts, unless it's debilitating, I give it five kilometers to go away. It usually does. — Paul Klipp

More people need to understand the games secular liberals play. Here's one rule-of-thumb: No matter how bad a story sounds - particularly if it sounds bad - recognize the pattern of defamation. — Marvin Olasky

A good rule of thumb is if you've made it to 35 and your job still requires you wear a nametag, you've probably made a serious vocational error. — Dennis Miller

Investigating rule of thumb: people grumbled about work at home and about home at work. — Cate Holahan

As a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without a tag. — Diana Gabaldon

The rule of thumb is that the complexity of the organism has to match the complexity of the environment at all scales in order to increase the likelihood of survival." He then explains why the odds feel stacked against us: "What is a complex environment? A complex environment is one that demands picking the right choice in order to succeed. If there are many possibilities that are wrong, and only a few that are right, we have to be able to choose the right ones in order to succeed. — Rebecca D. Costa

Then I should be able to say anything I want, right? Even the word 'penis'?"
Laney sighed. "Do we have to do this right now?"
You should try saying the word sometime."
I'll pass, thank you."
Payton shrugged. "Your choice, but I think you'd find it liberating. Everybody could use a good 'penis' now and then."
Laney glanced nervously around the coffee shop. "People are listening."
Sorry - you're right. Good rule of thumb: if you're gonna throw out a 'penis' in a public place, it should be soft. Otherwise it attracts too much attention."
The woman at the next table gaped at them. — Julie James

Almost everything can be construed as sexual harassment depending upon the way it is said. One general rule of thumb is to think of your female co-workers as you would your sister. Yes, she is a woman. No, she is not a sexual object. Yes, your parents probably like her more than they like you. — Linda Sunshine

Rule of thumb: The more trimmings an insurance plan has and the harder someone is pitching it, the faster you should run. — Andrew Tobias

When engaging in simple everyday banter and communications, this rule of thumb can really help suppress a lot of our negative word 'vomit' since we often mindlessly chat about the things we don't like. If we refrain from expressing our negative opinions about things unless they're directly asked for, we can train ourselves to respond rather than react the second we see or hear something and then feel we must verbalize our views about it.

Remember, even if we don't agree with someone or something, we can still speak about the subject at hand in a positive light to encourage growth rather than guilty motivation. I like to say I express more "inspirations" than "opinions" with each passing day. — Alaric Hutchinson

There must be a rule of thumb in pop-culture archaeology that states that the allure of any topic is inversely related to its assigned importance in the affairs of humanity. The more trivial the subject, the dearer it is to most of its partisans and the more worthy of scholarship. The smallest things in life often mean the most to people. — Paul Di Filippo

When a CEO looks around her staff meeting, a good rule of thumb is that at least 50 percent of the people at the table should be experts in the company's products and services and responsible for product development. This will help ensure that the leadership team maintains focus on product excellence. Operational components like finance, sales, and legal are obviously critical to a company's success, but they should not dominate the conversation. — Eric Schmidt

A good rule of thumb is as follows: If the numbers come from somebody wearing a tie (Wall Street economist or analyst, industry public relations department, captive think tank academic and so on), you ought to be very skeptical. By design messages from these people are intended to move markets, move merchandise and/or move public policy and are not a comment on the state of the physical universe. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Great rule of thumb is to never say anything behind someone's back that you wouldn't say straight to the person's face. — Kenneth H. Blanchard

My rule of thumb is that if I am interested or intrigued by something, others will be as well. — Wolf Blitzer

The rule of thumb for a director or producer - which prevents them from just sticking their names on everything - is that you have to contribute substantially more than 50 percent of the character dialogue and story. — Harold Ramis

Rule of thumb: if you think something is clever and sophisticated beware-it is probably self-indulgence. — Donald A. Norman

There's an old rule of thumb in politics that 90 percent of all 90 year-olds vote and 25 percent of all 25 year-olds vote. — Joseph P. Kennedy III

A good rule of thumb is that any environment that consistently leaves you feeling bad about who you are is the wrong environment. — Laurie A. Helgoe

Someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly. — Paul Graham

We ordered food a few hours ago and worked through dinner. I had pasta with chicken, while
Kate preferred a turkey club with fries on the side. Much as I hate to admit it, I'm impressed.
Obviously, she doesn't subscribe to the "I can only eat salads in front of the opposite sex" rule of
thumb a lot of chicks swear by. Who gave women that idea? Like a guy's going to say to his friend,
"Dude, she was one fugly chick, but once I saw her chomping that romaine, I just had to nail her. — Emma Chase

So for any new checklist created from scratch, you have to pick the type that makes the most sense for the situation.
The checklist cannot be lengthy. A rule of thumb some use is to keep it to between five and nine items, which is the limit of working memory. — Atul Gawande

As a rough rule of thumb, I would say the smaller the pond, the more belligerent the fish. — Craig Brown

A good rule of thumb is: Pack twice as many books as changes of underwear. — Michael Dirda

For each rule of thumb, there is something that breaks that rule. — Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Exercise stimulates growth plates, by putting pressure on bone cells, forcing them to specialize and create new cells. Too much pressure, however, damages the growth plates, which are soft and fragile ... The rule of thumb is that lifting one's own body weight (in push-ups,pull-ups, etc) is fine at any age, and kids over fifteen can lift weights. — Arianne Cohen

If the rule of thumb for attention literacy is to pay attention to your intention, then the heuristic for crap detection is to make skepticism your default. — Howard Rheingold

It's hard to guess how smart the machines are, but a good rule of thumb is that they're always smarter than you think. — Daniel H. Wilson

A good rule of thumb for many things in life holds that things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could. — Lawrence Summers

Here is a pretty good rule of thumb for Democratic Presidents: if it didn't work for Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won four terms and a World War, it probably won't work for you either. — Jon Meacham

I've loved thrillers and spy stories since I was a kid. It's probably not a bad rule of thumb to write the kinds of stories you love to read. — Barry Eisler

Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. — Steven Pressfield

A good rule of thumb is 'Biology enables, culture forbids.' Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It's culture that obliges people to realise some possibilities while forbidding others. — Yuval Noah Harari

Here are five rules of thumb, should all your fingers on one hand turn into thumbs and you decide to rule them.
1. There is no day too dull, no problem too great that cannot be fixed with a couple of plays of 'rush rush' by Paula Abdul.
2. The amount of time it takes for you to get over him is exactly the same amount of time it will take for him to start missing you.
3. Talking about exercise burns exactly the same amount of calories as doing exercise.
4. 'When someone asks you if you are a god, you say YES!'
5. The office sucks.
Four of these are true. And one - is wrong! Damn wrong! — Hadley Freeman

My rule of thumb is build a site for a user, not a spider. — David Naylor

The rule of thumb in student files seemed to be, If you have nothing negative to say, don't say anything at all. — Harlan Coben

Here's a rule of thumb: If he hasn't faced the trial yet, or he's in the midst of it - encourage him. If he's been to the wars and is limping home wounded - comfort him. Once the wounds are bound up, encourage him to rise and face the fight again. — Hal Young

A pretty accurate rule of thumb is the people who did the most talk about it the least. The blowhards are the ones who did squat. — David Baldacci

There's one rule of thumb that suggests that you need one day of recovery for every mile run in a race. Another rule of thumb ... suggests one day ... for every kilometer run in anger. — Hal Higdon

If the search is for examples that contradict the predictions of standard economic models, a good rule of thumb is to start in France. — Robert H. Frank

As a rule of thumb, investors should spend the bulk of their time on the disclosures of the security under study, and they should spend significant time on the reports of competitors. — Benjamin Graham^David L.Dodd

One of my colleagues in Birmingham University, where I come from,' said Trevair, 'is a moral philosopher. He taught me that one of the ways to judge a course of action is to consider what company it puts one in. I doubt if that's very good philosophy, but I find it a good rule of thumb. — Jill Paton Walsh

Not surprisingly, the father if market efficiency, Gene Farma, has a very clever way to avoid the pitfalls of hyperbolic discounting. When he's invited to talk or engage in sone business activity, he has a . simple rule for deciding whether to accept: no matter how far in the future it's scheduled, he ask himself whether it's something he would want to do if the event were next week; if the answer is yes, he accepts, otherwise, he politely declines. This simple rule of thumb ensures that he uses the same discount rate across all decision horizons. — Andrew W. Lo

There's a rule of thumb in politics. If you're at a point where you're complaining about the other guy being mean and unfair and uncivil, that's probably a sign that you're losing. — Laura Ingraham