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.
In a certain sense it is the opposite of Hanlon’s razor. In the face of difficult behavior, Hanlon’s razor encourages even-mindedness (“they probably mean well”) whereas Grey’s law encourages conflict (“even if they do, so WHAT”).
It’s a really good way to get rid of the mentality of one person can’t make a difference. Because everyone is a drop, and without so many drops, there is no ocean. Maybe one individual drop doesn’t truly make a difference alone. But what if every drop was gone?
It helps me feel that, even if the difference I make isn’t big enough to make an impact, an impact only exists BECAUSE of all the drops.
That goes for both positive and negative things. A thousand bad drops are needed to make a bad thing. A thousand good drops to make a good one.
Sorry to question it, seeing as you like it so much, but doesn’t that not make a difference if you’re still fairly sure there’s not enough other drops?
I prefer the starfish on a beach analogy for the same thing because it cuts others out entirely.
Hm. Good question, and I can’t say I have a great answer.
I like the starfish one too, the ocean one is just better for my mindset.
I guess accountability? The starfish story appeals more to personal ego (not using the term ego as a bad thing here), where as the ocean one feels more like accountability to me.
Starfish is saying that the little thing you do can help someone, even if it doesn’t solve the problem. Ocean one is saying that everyone is responsible, even if only a tiny bit in the grand scheme.
I kind of pair it with a mindset of if every drop thinks that they don’t make a difference, that adds up. One person can’t save the planet, but every person thinking they can’t save the planet means that you have that ocean of people all thinking that they don’t matter. And that’s a big problem.
Like I said, probably not the best answer. Just rambling what came to mind.
Hey, if it works for you, I guess. I find I’m easily frustrated if I imagine there’s a ton of other people working against me but that’s really my issue.
Classic gojo with pumice. Was like washing your hands with sharp wet gravel. Pretty sure it just removes the top layer of skin more than it cleans anything. Can’t be dirty if it’s gone.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.” -Anatole France
When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore that means they’ve given up on you…you may not want to hear it but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you and want to make you better.
“The spaceships hung in the air, in much the same ways that bricks don’t” - Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy
I use this quote a lot when doing D&D Campaign prepping. It’s a fantastic example of a non-sensical sentence that somehow completely explains the subject
Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
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.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
God’s Final Message to His Creation: 'We apologize for the inconvenience."
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport.’
It parses fine really, there is a (possibly empty) set of things that float in the air, and the spaceship is one of them, but bricks are not. It’s not nonsensical, it’s just a creative twist on a common idiom (“in much the same way a brick does”) that’s so unexpected it seems silly.
I also think of the later books where Arthur perfects the art of falling and missing the ground sometimes.
Tagging on, since my favorite quote is also from Douglas Adams:
This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
It’s stuck with me as a perspective I have. It’s up to you to make things happen the way you want them to, and certain things shouldn’t be taken for granted.
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