About Us
The inspiration for this website, and the source of much of its content, is a book by Hugh Rawson called The Unwritten Laws of Life. Hugh, a former director of Penguin Reference Books in the USA, set himself the task of collecting all the adages, maxims, morals, observations, precepts, principles, proverbs, and other sayings that have been handed down over the years by humanity’s ‘unelected legislators’, and which, taken together, constitute the collective wisdom of mankind.
Why? As he says in the Introduction to his book -
Our lives are circumscribed by edicts and enactments, rules and regulations, declarations and proclamations. Typically, they are printed in miniscule type and presented in seemingly endless sections and subsections, causing the eyes gradually to glaze over and the mind to become numb. Such is the rule of law - and of lawyers, bureaucrats, administrators, apparatchiks, and officialdom generally. For all their wealth of detail, however, these written codes are of limited value in negotiating one’s way through life . . . .They tell you what not to do, but they are not much help in telling you what to do. For positive guidance, for an understanding of how life really works, as opposed to how legislators and other officials say it should work, we must look to the realm of unwritten law.
The Unwritten Laws of Life was republished in 2008 by Carbolic Smoke Ball Co. and can be obtained here.
This website contains the majority of the laws in the book, but the intention is that over time the site will expand to hold many more contributed by users. As technology advances, society evolves, life expectancy increases, and globalization blurs cultural boundaries, so the ‘laws’ of life are bound to change too.
Managing editor: Philip Jenks, editor [at] lawsoflife.co.uk
Subscribe via email
