What's a quote that has stuck with you for your whole life?
I always loved browsing such posts on reddit, so thought I should make one on lemmy too
Edit: Usually these kind of posts only used to have excerpts from books or ancient proverbs, but now I am seeing a lot more quotes from shows/movies/games are also resonating with people. It’s pretty cool to see.
This one stuck with me and resurfaces in my mind every now and then, particularly nowadays:
“We’ve arranged a global civilization in which the most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” ~ Carl Sagan
My dad said this offhanded joking remark to me 30 years ago and it lives rent free in my head. It’s a privileged view point for sure but I took it to mean save and be prepared but don’t be frugal toa detriment. Spend on things you love and spend away on things you hate. Don’t waste time if you can afford not to.
Not my life because it was a comment on Reddit (at least I think it wasn’t quoted from anything else). But I loved it and I remember it years later still.
As my father told me, There are only three useless things in this world. Nuns’ nipples, bishops’ balls and an employer’s praise without a raise.
With all of the time I have, I am an insult to the dead.
In context, the person is saying they feel like they are wasting their life and that innumerable people in the past would’ve killed to have the kind of free time or life they have.
It reminds me to be grateful for both the time I have alive and the quality of that time.
I find it extremely motivating in pursuing my various personal pursuits. I should seem like a Renaissance master to the people of the past and anything less is insulting.
I took an introduction to nursing class in high school where we had to know the names of all the bones, the chambers of the heart, CPR, etc. During one particular topic, one of the students kinda snapped and exclaimed “I’m too stupid for this!” The teacher, a badass ER nurse who was a single mom, rode a Harley, and had seen everything from electrocuted flesh to years-old bed sores, simply said “Good. That means you’re learning.”
I work with special needs kids, and whenever they complain about feeling stupid, I pass along that wisdom, but in a bit nicer way: “You’re not stupid, you’re just learning.”
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
-Thomas Paine
People uphold their own oppressors because of a need to uphold tradition. F**k the monarchy.
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