A Quote by Matsuo Basho

Learn the rules, and then forget them. — © Matsuo Basho
Learn the rules, and then forget them.

Quote Topics

Rebels learn the rules better than the rule-makers do. Rebels learn where the holes are, where the rules can best be breached. Become an expert at the rules. Then break them with creativity and style.
If you go to a master to study and learn the techniques, you diligently follow all the instructions the master puts upon you. But then comes the time for using the rules in your own way and not being bound by them....You can actually forget the rules because they have been assimilated. You are an artist. Your own innocence now is of one who has become an artist, who has been, as it were, transmuted.... You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules.
To be able to create fully, it's maybe fine that you learn the rules, but you have to forget and to rebel against those rules.
Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart. If I were pressed to say why I loved him, I feel that my only reply could be: Because it was he, because it was I.
I think that the essence of being an artist is to break rules. You have to learn rules, and you have to break them, because if you make art only by the rules, then you make very boring art.
Management gurus in general are, I think, best avoided. All too often they reduce your working life to a list of rules to be followed. Targets are aimed at. Goals kicked at. You then break the rules or forget them and, hey presto, you start beating yourself up.
Learn all the rules... then break them.
Learn the rules and then break them in such a way as to exercise good taste.
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
Playing games with agreed upon rules helps children learn to live by rules, establish the delicate balance between competition andcooperation, between fair play and justice and exploitation and abuse of these for personal gain. It helps them learn to manage the warmth of winning and the hurt of losing; it helps them to believe that there will be another chance to win the next time.
But sticking to rules just because they're there does not make them right. You need to learn when the rules should be broken.
Forgotten? No, we never do forget: We let the years go: eash then clean with tears, Leave them to bleach, out in the open day, Or lock them careful by, like dead friends’ clothes, Till we shall dare unfold them without pain,— But we forget not, never can forget.
Creativity means learning where the rules exist, and then breaking them! Saying, "It's better this way." But you have to know the rules in order to break them with any grace.
Do I have to know rules and all that crap? Then forget it.
Sometimes when I do an overdub solo, they'll keep four or five of my attempts and then mix the bits that they like to make a solo up out of them. It's not against the rules, really - I can learn my own solos, then. But that's the whole beauty of multi-track recording, isn't it?
The rule, I think, is: Do your homework, learn what there is to learn about the real world, and then when you get in the room, forget it all.
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