A lot of what people "know" is nonsense, and the rules based on that knowledge are fetters and hobbles

Wherein near as I can tell the exact phrase fetters and hobbles traces back to the 1933 Winston Churchill book about the Duke of Marlborough and Churchill might be referencing the Iliad


Bill James, America, Fuck Yeah:

I myself am a stubborn, sometimes arrogant person who refuses to obey some of the rules that everybody else follows. I pay no attention to the rules of grammar. I write fragments if I goddamned well feel like it. I refuse to follow many of the principles of proper research that are agreed upon by the rest of the academic world. An editor said to me last year, "Well, you've earned the right to do things your own way." Bullshit; I was that way when I was 25. It has to do with following the rules that make sense to me and ignoring the ones that don't. It doesn't make me a bad person; it makes me who I am.