Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Piss-poor planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on mine.
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.
It takes a woman nine months to make a baby, nine women cannot make a baby in a month.
Classic (and likely mangled by myself) computer science quote which I always enjoy encountering in the wild!
Classic project management quote.
It's from "The Mythical Man Month" by Fred Brooks. It was published in 1975. I've seen people make the same project management mistakes that the book discussed for the last 30 years.
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.
Jean-Luc Picard
Something along the lines of:
'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.
If you want to travel fast, go alone; but if you want to travel far, go together.
It's one of those African proverbs with an unknown origin but their emphasis on community has always been a guiding principle for me.
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.
Marcus Aurelius
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.
My father, a union organiser: "You can love the company all you like, but the company will never love you back."
Stood me in good stead down the years.
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.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”
― Captain Jean-Luc Picard
In 20 years, the only ones to remember all the hard work and long hours are your children.
In 100 years, nobody will care
Growing old is mandatory, growing up optional.
Murphy's law is always apllicable, unless you depend on it.
"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
Does a poem count? Ozymandias has stuck with me forever.
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."
When you look at someone through rose colored glasses, the red flags just look like flags.
"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
“What Orwell failed to predict is that we'd buy the cameras ourselves, and that our biggest fear would be that nobody was watching.”
"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.
When camping, late at night, a buddy told another one of my buddies:
“If you can see my face, I can’t see anything”.
I thought it was hilarious and concise and it still sticks with me. If your flashlight is illuminating someone’s face, they are being blinded!
"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
“Never stop at the first right answer”
There are multiple solutions to every problem, and the first one you come up with is unlikely to be the best.
On the other hand, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”
C.S. Lewis — 'Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when we look back everything is different.'
“It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri, and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us – but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses.” — Carl Sagan
This one has been my go to for years and years.
It gives me comfort. In that we probably won't every get there, because of our evolutionary failures as a species, but that's ok. Because the next species or evolution of our kind will stand a better chance.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
Don't worry about it, you're washable. - Dad
I was a germaphobe kid, and my dad was a mechanic. Oil and grease horrified me until for some reason that quote just stuck with me.
Two from my mom... 1 - I cut, you choose.
2 - If a boy will cheat with you, he will cheat on you.
"Everyday is somebody's first day." I think of it like a more generous Hanlon's Razor "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Especially when an employee is perhaps not doing a good job or is slow. If it was my first day on the job, I'd like a little consideration.
"It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society"
"It's not the first thought that comes to mind that matters, what's important is what you after that"
This was in the context of racism. I was raised in an racist environment, and I was struggling with the awful thoughts that had been indoctrinated in to me bubbling up when I encountered folk that were the target of that racism.
That quote helped me not be hung up on guilt and self flagellation, and instead to focus on being the person I want to be, rather than the person I was taught to be.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Never forget, in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table.
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
Every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
— Carl Sagan
"Perfect is the enemy of Good."
“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
"We're getting paid to put paint on the wall."
I was like 17 or so and had a temp job as a housepainter for a couple weeks, and I was sinking time and energy into doing an excellent job and being really efficient with paint and ... kind of missing the forest for the trees. I was putting unnecessary care & excellence into a back wall and the wall was taking longer to prep than the whole-house job could afford. One of the old guys on site pulled me aside me and, in the eloquent terms above, pointed out that ... the real goal here is paint on the wall. We're doing a good job because we take pride in our work, but the outcome is significantly more important than the journey to everyone else. Doing a "good job" can't wind up as an obstacle to the job itself.
I was always a details person and perfectionist, and that one clear lesson about taking a step back from the details of a task to double-check what the actual goal is ... has always stuck with me.
People don't stop playing because they grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.
Listen
There is only one way to make people talk more than they care to. Listen. Listen with hungry earnest attention to every word. In the intensity of your attention, make little nods of agreement, little sounds of approval. You can’t fake it. You have to really listen. In a posture of gratitude. And it is such a rare and startling experience for them, such a boon to ego, such a gratification of self, to find a genuine listener, that they want to prolong the experience. And the only way to do that is to keep talking. A good listener is far more rare than an adequate lover.
-Travis McGee
from Nightmare in Pink
by John D. McDonald
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Blade Runner
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it" - Someone mistranslating Aristotle
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~