"It's not your fault, but it is your problem."
I honestly love and repeat this line way too much
Just because you weren't the cause doesn't mean it isn't something you need to worry about/fix. I learned this one from my high school English teacher when a student was late and tried to get out of it by blaming traffic lol. The traffic was not their fault, but it ended up being their problem.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it
Unfortunately, too many people have been trained to reject ideas or thoughts without first thinking them through. Many simply react to whatever word, expression, or concept triggers them without giving the rest a second thought. For example a brilliant idea can be presented online, but if one word is out of place, the usage of that word will debated instead of the idea.
"It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life."
-Captain Jean-Luc Picard
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
There's this quote attributed to Rabbi Yisrael Salanter:
When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.
There are two lessons here. First - the best way to affect meaningful change is to start local. Rather than spending a lot of time agonizing over national politics, get involved in your community - your neighborhood, your town, your apartment building, even just the house you share with your family. Your community will take better care of you and the other people that you care about than any national government ever will.
Second - ultimately the only person whose behavior you can change is your own. Don't be too harsh with other people when they don't behave the way that you believe they should. Be a more stringent judge of your own behavior.
But temper that with this:
Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much. Or berate yourself too much either.
Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
There's this quote early in Good Omens: “It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”
It's an awkward one these days, but it sounds Pratchett-esque enough to salvage.
Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
Hurt people hurt people.
Seriously though:
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. — Douglas Adams
If the penalty for breaking a law is a fine, that law only exists for poor people.
When my dad was teaching me how to ride a bike, I kept falling.
He noticed that I was paying so much attention to the road that I couldn't focus on riding the bike.
Finally he picked me up, looked me dead in the eyes and said, "You rule the road. Don't let the road rule you".
Somehow that phrase immediately gave me the ability to ride a bicycle.
I have shared it with other people learning to ride a bicycle after they have fallen down at least once.
It freaking works.
I used to think of myself as a complete pacifist, but these words haven't left my mind since I heard them:
You think you're better than everyone else, but there you stand: the good man doing nothing. And while evil triumphs and your rigid pacifism crumbles into bloodstained dust, the only victory afforded to you is that you stuck true to your guns.
Of course this only applies to defense, never to offense (especially "preemptive defense"), but I can't really argue against it.
No matter where you go, there you are.
- Buckaroo Banzai
This kind of question always immediately makes me think of something a friend said years ago when I was still a teen. We were talking about school and education and shit and it was on the subject of asking questions when you don't fully understand something and he said "rather ask a stupid question and be a fool for five minutes, then keep your mouth shut and be a fool for the rest of your life." I think it was something that his mother had told him, in their language, so I'm constructing that statement from memory but it was something close to that.
“Don’t work yourself out if a job.”
My pops told me this after I told him how much more work I had been doing than my coworkers, and how fast I got all of my stuff done. This was like 15 years ago. I immediately started pacing myself, and I’ve since been infinitely less stressed at work.
This has influenced my entire idea of spending money:
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
We thought of life by analogy was a journey, was a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end. And the thing was to get to that end.
Success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you're dead.
But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played
-- Alan Watts
My Uncle once told me that the most important thing you can learn is where to find more information.
Bill Nye: "Everyone you'll ever meet knows something you don't"
This can be applied to anything, but the quote as I read it in a book by Piers Anthony (I know, gross, I was in middle school), was:
Power is a means to an end. Don't let the means become the end.
I often think of it as:
Money is a means to an end. Don't let the means become the end.
"The thing about happiness is that you only know you had it when it's gone. I mean, you may think to yourself that you're happy. But you don't really believe it. You focus on the petty bullshit, or the next job, or whatever. It's only looking back by comparison with what comes after that you really understand, that's what happiness felt like."
-Conrad Kellogg. Fallout 4.
Two quotes/ statements from a book named “The Midnight Library” ;
-
“If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise”.
-
“Never underestimate the big importance of small things”.
-
"If it weren't for my horse, I would've never spent that year in college."
I don't know what it means, but it has changed my life.
You won't know if you don't ask.
People fear rejection or embarrassment for asking other people questions but once you realize that it's the most efficient way to navigate life it really helps. Saves you time and energy. Often saves you emotional energy as well in the long run.
If you like someone just ask them.
If you want to know where someone got something or learned a skill just ask them.
Curiosity is important and I feel so many people are so socially anxious that they will just try and Google and Google as opposed to entering into a simple verbal exchange with a stranger or something.
Choose your rut carefully.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Used this against my controlling mother, who liked to lay BS at my feet and make me think it was my responsibility to fix. When it was HER that caused the whole thing. The look on her face when I hit her with that phrase and just turned around and left was priceless.
There a LOT of things that are just flat not your problem, even if someone else tries to make it yours.
I was going to post something cheeky like “Fuck here we go again”, noped out, pressed backspace and then this…
"Let go, or be dragged."
It's simple, yet so meaningful.
What you do when you don't have to, makes you who you are.
Experience is a lantern lightning only it's carrier
Making fun of the weak (poor, minorities, etc) is easy because they can't fight back, that's why the best comedy is the one that upsets the powerful.
It a saying from Ubuntu (the philosophy not the operating system) “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” in English it’s “I am because you are” It’s a simple and concrete way of saying how we’re not judged by how we treat others but we are who we are through our interactions with others.
Honestly I’ve only browsed through a bit of philosophy and I’m sure I missing a heap but it really struck me.
Seek to understand, then be understood.
"Freedom is not a goal, but a tool".
-Reiraku (Downfall) By Inio Asano
The world needs fewer cynics and more skeptics.
Never do anything you would be afraid to explain to the paramedics.
Yes, for those of us who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their idealism—and their assumption of immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in faith and in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong—and lucky—he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan. Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death—however mutable man may be able to make them—our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.
--Stanley Kubrick, responding to the question "If life is so purposeless, do you feel that it’s worth living?" in a 1968 Playboy interview.
If it takes only two minutes, do it right away.
"Things in life aren't always quite what they seem, there's more than one given angle to any one given scene. So bear that in mind next time you try to intervene on any one given angle to any one given scene."
How you do anything is how you do everything.
Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.
"You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it." Pirkei Avot (2:21)
While I’m not religious, this Jewish quote resonates with me. The “work” is never truly finished, we can all do more to make things better, both for ourselves and our community.
Every person dies alone.
“Deep” or “profound” means nothing in research design. If you read it somewhere, see if it defined precisely in this context. If not, see if you can mentally replace it with a more precise word. If not, be skeptical of the validity of the claims.
- My Research Design professor
I’m being a bit cheeky but this has actually stuck with me over the years and I do think it’s helpful.
Everything in moderation.
Work smarter, not harder.
Yay Disney cartoons!
If you make yourself irreplaceable you can't get promoted.
Everyone always has a plan until they get punched in the face.Enjoy this thought poison that's been with me for a long time:
WARNING: THOUGHT POISON
It’s a bitter truth that, in the end, your intentions don’t matter. Neither does your pain, your past, or the reasons behind what you did. No one cares about the context or the quiet wars you fought alone. All that remains is how others saw you. Their perception becomes your truth—your legacy—no matter how far it is from who you really were—or tried to be.
Whenever you are killing time, time is also killing you
“It can be two things”
I don't think it's really profound but 'perception is reality'. How a person perceives something is what they think is true and real, even if it isn't.
