Asklemmy

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.

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!

Believe those who are seeking the truth, doubt those who find it

“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”

― Captain Jean-Luc Picard

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

If something is worth doing, it's worth doing well.

Said by a friend who, in the late 90s, copied a dozen albums to minidisk for me. He named all the albums and track names using a remote to select each letter one by one. It must have taken him many hours to do it. But he wanted to do a good job. Up up up up A right, up up up up up f, etc etc. Utterly tedious but he wanted to do a good job.

"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

@zinklog

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

In 20 years, the only ones to remember all the hard work and long hours are your children.

“What Orwell failed to predict is that we'd buy the cameras ourselves, and that our biggest fear would be that nobody was watching.”

In 100 years, nobody will care

Growing old is mandatory, growing up optional.

Murphy's law is always apllicable, unless you depend on it.

"Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the word. It must be given freely. In abundance. "- Steven Erikson.

"Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool." -Mark Twain

"You are too concerned what was and what will be. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called present."- Master Oogway.

"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.

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Blade Runner

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor

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."

"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

"Many that live deserve death and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the wise cannot see all ends." Gandalf, Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring

For some reason, this quote (and the entirety of Gollum's story) has stuck itself in my head. I guess I interpret this as a message to not be so quick to judge death upon another person, no matter what they had done. You never know what their future will be like, and cutting their lives off would mean losing out on the potential benefits that their future might bring. Even bad people can contribute good things. I know that this is just my personal opinion, and a lot of people probably won't agree with this, but this is the lesson that I got from Gollum's story.

"Only when the white man has destroyed the whole forest, has killed fish and animals and all rivers are dry, will realize that no one can eat money. "

"Our prime purpose in this world is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them."

• The Dalai Lama

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

"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.

“No one is going to write you were a good employee on your headstone. “

And

“Time is the one form of compensation you can never recoup. “

Meaning Time off from work is valuable, more so than the $$ value especially once you get to a certain point.

It hasn't been that long, only few years, but it always hits me deep:

"Everyone thinks they are the hero of their own story." - Handsome Jack

Probably not something original, but the voice acting and the scene it was in made it way more powerful than any philosopher in a book could.

"You wouldn't worry what other people thought of you if you knew how seldom they did" ... good for those awkward teenage years. Conversely, it also highlights the value of receiving and giving attention.

“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.

I only concern myself with 'how'. 'Why' is a question for philosophers and cowards, of which I am neither.

The secret of invisibility : Stand where no one is watching.

"Dude, suckin' at something is the first step to being sorta good at something." - Jake the Dog, Adventure Time.

“One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.”

• Bertrand Russell

"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.

Only dead fish go with the current

People don't stop playing because they grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.

“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

"Friends and Family fuck you first". Sounds like a pretty shitty quote, but it proves to be true as you get older.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler"

I have two that keep finding their way to be relevant. "smooth seas never made a skilled sailor" and "dont break anything you cant fix"

"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people"

Perhaps its an overgeneralization, but I like the concept behind it and at least it keeps me from gossiping / talking about people behind their backs. I am mostly an average mind though, by this definition.

A falling knife has no handle.

I literally repeat this out loud anytime a knife falls and I think it's become my mental stopping mechanism to make sure I don't try to catch it.

I heard one once that goes like "a fool does what he hates, a wise man does what he loves, but a great man learns to love what is necessary."
I think I am butchering the original phrasing which is probably why I can't find any source for this quote. But I think about it a lot.

I've got two:

“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.

Don't hold grudges. While you're holding a grudge, the other guy's out dancing.

Grey's Law: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice