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.
For example, you’re not very likely to become a Christian being raised Muslim in Iran. As much as we’d like to believe we can shape ourselves, we’re only a part of the equation.
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”).
“A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us.
But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fail, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination.”
“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.
In German but "As long as they pretend to pay me, I pretend to work." Probably one of the first pieces of wisdom I got way back as a wee apprentice.
Now, I work more than this quote may make one think of me, but it‘s influenced me insofar as I‘m aware of not overdoing it as my employers never overdo the pay part either.
Instead of focusing exclusively on how fast you can get to the finish, which may result in missteps along the way that slow you down, focus on moving smoothly accounting for variables that might make the journey more rough and doing what you can to plan for/avoid them. Making everything “smooth sailing” all the way to the finish line. There’s a dozen different interpretations that can be applied here, and it’s more or less an adaptation of “slow and steady wins the race” but it’s so broad that it’s generally true.
Sometimes, speed for the sake of speed is faster, period, but often speed for the sake of speed comes with compromises and issues along the way which may make the whole process slower over all. I’d rather go smoothly than quickly.
A good real-world example of this is stop and go traffic. Instead of going quickly to catch up to the person ahead of you, then stopping abruptly, if you instead go at a slow/steady rate, you will burn less fuel, consume less of you brake material, and over all have a more pleasant drive than if you’re constantly stopping and going. In addition, if everyone were to adhere to this in heavy traffic, then most traffic jams would very likely be less impactful on travel delays. You’d get through congestion easier and with less frustration, and very likely arrive sooner, feeling more calm and relaxed.
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 wish! Nah, I went to the Discworld Convention when I was 8 or so, and met him at one of the book-signing events. Though even in the few minutes that I spent chatting with him there, he was very obviously a warm, kind, generous man. GNU Terry Pratchett.
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