Wizard's Rules

Wizard's First Rule
"People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it is true, or because they are afraid it might be true." Given proper motivation ( in other words, incentives and disincentives), almost anyone will believe almost anything. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, (and prejudices), and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.

Wizard's Second Rule
"The greatest harm can result from the best of intentions." Its sounds a paradox, but kindness and goodness can be an insidious path to destruction. Sometimes, doing what seems right is wrong, and can cause harm. The only counter to it is knowledge, wisdom, forethought, and understanding of the First Rule. Even then, that is not enough. Violation can cause anything from discomfort, to disaster, death.

Wizard's Third Rule
"Passion rules reason" Letting your emotions control your reason may cause trouble to yourself and those around you.

Wizard's Fourth Rule
"There is magic in sincere forgiveness, the magic to heal. In forgiveness you grant, but more so, in forgiveness you receive." Forgiving and being forgiven are powerful elements of healing for the soul. Forgiving others grants by the giving of forgiveness but more so one receives self healing by the necessity of letting go of bitterness through forgiveness of other.

Wizard's Fifth Rule
"Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds betray a lie." People will lie to deceive you from what they truly mean to do. Watching the actions they take will prove their true intentions. In other words, the principle of revealed preferences is at work here.

Wizard's Sixth Rule
"The only sovereign that you can allow to rule you is reason." The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists, exists; what is, is. From this irreducible bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced. Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality – it’s our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see.

Wizard's Seventh Rule
"Life is the future, not the past." The past can teach us, through experience, how to accomplish things in the future, comfort us with cherished memories, and provide the foundation of what has already been accomplished. But only the future holds life. To live in the past is to embrace what is dead. To live life to its fullest, each day must be created anew. As rational, thinking beings we must use our intellect, not a blind devotion to what has come before, to make rational choices.

Wizard's Eighth Rule
"Deserve Victory." Be justified in your convictions. Be completely committed. Earn what you want and need rather than waiting for others to give you what you desire.

Wizard's Ninth Rule
"A contradiction cannot exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole." To believe in a contradiction is to abdicate your belief in the existence of the world around you and the nature of the things in it, to instead embrace any random impulse that strikes your fancy--to imagine something is real simply because you wish it were. A thing is what it is, it is itself. There can be no contradictions. In reality, contradictions cannot exist. To believe in them you must abandon the most important thing you possess: your rational mind. The wager for such a bargain is your life. In such an exchange, you always lose what you have at stake.

Wizard's Tenth Rule
"Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self." People who for whatever reason don't want to see the truth can be acutely hostile to it and shrill in their denunciation of it. They frequently turn their venomous antagonism on whoever dares to point out that truth ... To those seeking the truth, it's a matter of simple, rational, self interest to always keep reality in view. Truth is rooted in reality, after all, not the imagination.

Wizard's Last Rule. The Rule unwritten.
No rule is ever written in stone. Until the event happens, everything is possible. In other words, the choice at every step of the way is always yours to make.