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.
Not my circus, not my monkeys. Let go or get dragged.
I heard them from my mom who went to Al Anon (I was in alcoholics anonymous). The first one is don’t make other people’s problems your problems. The second relates to letting people make their own mistakes. They’re the greatest teacher
"For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”
Cannot remember where this is from but I like it enough tosaved it in my notenbook.
Oof, I have quite a lot. One of my favourites is, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
I find it immensely relatable, as I think a huge number of problems in the world today stem from simply apathy. People who say they dislike the state of the world and even that they want to change it, but refuse to do absolutely anything at all, being perfectly content to just let bad things happen.
This comment reminds me of the Eichmann trial. He wasn’t inherently evil like we want to believe. He was just a man doing his job, sending jews to their death. It’s pretty chilling to think about the evils he carried out when he was just doing what he was told to do.
Another somewhat counterpoint, I think in today’s society it’s harder than it traditionally has been. Specifically, I would love to go to protests and be more active. But for me it’s really hard to do that because I have obligations. Specifically, I can’t take a week off of work to go to DC and hold some signs. It’s not that I’m refusing to do anything, I just don’t have the time when I’m more worried about my mortgage. I do donate to charities but it’s very difficult to do much more because of debt.
Me too! But the other problem I have is if I get hurt at a protest I can’t work. I’m the primary breadwinner for my houshold. So if I go to jail, or get shot with a rubber bullet, my family will starve.
I once overheard a pair of utility workers talking, and as I walked past I only overheard a snippet of conversation. The older one yelled up the cherrypicker to the younger one and said, in a heavy Boston accent:
“If only you could use your powers for good, instead of for useless…”
“The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.” by Terence McKenna
And the other is from an old salty chief when I was in the navy. This is paraphrasing but:
“Every fuck up comes down to a combination of three root causes: didn’t know, didn’t care, or a material problem”
Someone gets hurt on the job? Well, did they not know they were doing something wrong? Did they not care enough about safety? Or was it simply because something broke? Maybe they didn’t know AND they didn’t care to find out.
“The hard way is the easy way” has always rung true because when you take short cuts you end up making more work for yourself. Maybe the thing didn’t fit because you didn’t take the time to measure it properly, or you didn’t calibrate the machine. Or you made assumptions that turned out untrue because you didn’t take the time to fully research them or whatever.
Do the work up front, or it increases exponentially. I literally despise this quote. Growing up I hated when my dad quoted it at me. And I’m a little disgusted with myself for agreeing with him now haha. But it’s so true.
“Documentation is the name of the game”: My dad was a union president for the board of Ed in my town growing up. He had to deal with a lot of he-said-she-said cases. But whoever can prove what they’re saying with proper, timestamped documentation always wins the case.
As fluffy as this quote sounds, I always find it relevant. From taking on a difficult task at work, to getting past ladder anxiety in a video game. If you’ve ever executed on something so well that afterwards you felt like it was a waste of time, it might be. You didn’t get an opportunity to learn. Which reminds me of another relevant quote, “Losing is fun!”
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