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.
Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Damn… that’s better that the muddy pig wrestling one and the pigeon chess one both.
Am I wrong or is that George Carlin?
That was a great read, thank you for that!
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.
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”.
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 that’s why it says “emergency”. Asking for help is okay, dumping your problems over to me so it’s my “emergency” is not.
You can ask for help and give me some of your work, but not your responsibilities.
‘This is a you problem. Not an us problem.’
Related: Remember your PPPPPPPs! Proper planning and preparation prevents piss-poor performance!
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.
Jean-Luc Picard
That’s a good one. Also, “no being is so important that it may usurp the rights of another”.
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.
Your username reminded me of my favorite Sanderson quote.
The most important step a man can take? It’s not the first one, is it? It’s the next one. Always the next step, Dalinar
I still think about it all the time when I’m in a tough spot.
All the knights radiant oath are great too.
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.
Yeah, but that means if you stick out too much, you’ll get recorded and posted online for entertainment
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
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.
Believe those who are seeking the truth, doubt those who find it
Just not everyone who claims to be seeking the truth!
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.
Sorry to break it to you, but that’s almost 50 years.
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.
In 20 years, the only ones to remember all the hard work and long hours are your children.
Oof, this one hit hard for me. I’ve been working a lot of hours lately and I need to start putting my actual life as a priority. Thanks for this.
When you look at someone through rose colored glasses, the red flags just look like flags.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”
― Captain Jean-Luc Picard
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.
Maybe they’re not words to live by – if you’re a coward.
“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
I often think of this one as well.
It parses fine really; there is a (possibly empty) set of things that hang 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.
Some of my favourite Douglas Adams ones:
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.’
