Rules are **tools**. They are guidelines that usually lead to the goal(s). Goals are the important part. Goals have value. When a rule in a particular situation **doesn't** lead you towards the goal, it's the rule that must bend, not your movement towards the goal. A very simplified example. There's a speed limit on the highway. The goal is "be safe". If the speed limit is 70mph, but traffic is going 85 ... do you obey the rule? Or do you try to satisfy the goal? At 70, you are a dangerous obstruction (and there's a law against that). At 85 you are violating the speed limit, but you are safer (if conditions agree) because you are not an obstruction. This is called "the doctrine of competing harms". You break the law either way; but one way, you are better satisfying the actual **goal**. Laws and rules and guidelines are just formalized steps to narrow your construction of a plan that reaches your goal. Sometimes to do the right thing (reach the goal), you have to bend or even break them.