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.
“Arguing with idiots is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, the bird is going to shit on the board and strut around like it won anyway.” Shannon L. Alder
Copy/pasted from Goodreads, I’m not actually verifying.
I took a long time to warm to this one. I used to think that if I could just make the right arguments people would agree with me. Eventually, I realised that even if they’re perfectly reasonable, natural language has a certain bitrate, and human memory has a certain bitrate of loss over a given timeframe. If you can’t explain your idea quickly one of you will hit it.
I dislike this one quite a bit. I'm a good planner, but we're all human, and can forget sometimes. This quote is just an excuse to feel better about not helping someone out, and not in a healthy I'm-setting-boundaries manner.
I think there’s a difference between being a shitty person and being unwilling to help and being repeatedly used because you’ve helped out a couple of times before and now people end up leveraging your kindness. I personally subscribe to the line of thinking in the comment you replied to after giving the person I’m working with the benefit of the doubt that it’s a justified emergency a couple of times. I have a list of people at work now that I’ll still assist but I don’t jump at the opportunity as quickly because everything is an emergency to them and I think that’s just as shitty as not helping someone.
Just to clarify, I phrase it a bit differently: Not “piss-poor planning” but rather “a lack of planning” since it sounds less aggressive.
I think there’s a difference between being a shitty person and being unwilling to help and being repeatedly used because you’ve helped out a couple of times before and now people end up leveraging your kindness.
Unfortunately the older I have gotten, I have found that this applies zero to the world of corporate and upper management when dealing with their endless ‘emergencies’ due to fuckups of planning.
Also, throw sales management into that above lot. They tend to be the worst when it comes to any sort of concept of planning or prioritizing or, well, anything.
Edit: edit just to clarify what I meant was shit tends to roll downhill in a major way and you either have to do it or else.
‘You’re just an NPC in everyone else’ life, no one really cares about what weird shoes you wear, or whatever. No one’s remembering, don’t worry about it’
Really helps out in the world really, it’s kinda true.
When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down… with the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!
Cave Johnson, Portal 2
Maybe not words to live by, but certainly a memorable quote.
All these science spheres are made of asbestos all the way. Keeps out the rats. Let us know if you feel a shortness of breath, a persistent dry cough, or your heart-stopping. Because that is not part of the test. That’s asbestos…Worst case scenario, you miss out on a few rounds of Canasta, plus you forwarded the cause of science by three centuries. I punch those numbers into a calculator, it makes a happy face.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
Anyone who appreciates this one and hasn’t read the entirety of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (compiled into book form) really should. Many gems of stoic wisdom therein.
Not my whole life but ever since I learned it twenty years ago in the army. “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. It’s a saying that means to learn things carefully, slowly, and methodically. When you are learning like this speed will follow as a natural progression. So if you learn something slowly and smoothly it will translate into being quick and doing it correctly. I have applied this to all sorts of different things in life and it has never failed me.
Logged in just to upvote this one, because I’m at a new job and something I struggle with is feeling like I ask too many questions. This was good motivation for me, thanks for sharing.
You’ve got to go through a round of redundancies/layoffs to learn this. No amount of telling some freebie-munching programmer will teach them. Source: I was a freebie-munching programmer.
And the acceptance beyond that is “… and that’s ok, it’s not the company’s job to love you, but don’t for a second be fooled into loyalty”.
"The best time to plant a tree is fifty years ago. The second best time is right now" - essentially don't worry about what you could have done better, or what could have been, make now and the future as good as you can
and
"If you don't fall off occasionally, you're not trying hard enough" - originally told to me in the context of learning to windsurf (I still can't windsurf), but applicable in a lot of areas. This doesn't mean try to fall off, it means failure is a natural part of growth, not something to be shunned
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