Asklemmy

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."

• Picard

Here are a few nice ones, I can't really pick:

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” - John Maynard Keynes

(You can also apply this one to proprietary software vs. Free software (don't say open source in my presence))

“The tyrants are only great because we are on our knees.” - Étienne de La Boétie

“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” - Rosa Luxemburg

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."

• Ernest Hemingway (though I'll admit, I first heard it in Kingsman)

“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, direct, easy to understand and wrong.“

 - Paraphrased H.L Mencken 

“To study religion is merely to know the mind of man, but if one truely wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.”

 - Iain Banks

“I believe that children are our future. Unless we stop them now.”

-  Homer Simpson

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” ― Steven Weinberg

We do not inherit the world from our ansestors, we borrow it from our children. -Antoine de Saint Exupéry

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.

• Unknown soldier

"Not everything's a lesson Ryan. Sometimes you just fail."

• Dwight Schrute :D

As someone who loves space:

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke

"The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few."

Not growing up with TOS, I always thought this quote was super old, like Greek philosopher stuff. Nope. It was friggin Spock! I gotta believe that the sentiment had to have existed long before Star Trek though. If it wasn't, then... That sucks.

"I ship is safest in harbour, but that's not what ships are for."

"When people turn to you when shit goes wrong. That's when you're a man."

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.

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)

Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. - Mark Twain

I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.

Kurt Vonnegut

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

-G.K. Chesterton

"Gentlemen, I don’t know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change geography"

General Sir Charles Harrington

Just before one of the largest non-nuclear explosions was detonated.

“Be excellent to each other”

'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

-George Orwell

your future hasn't been written yet. No one's has. Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one.

From Back to the Future.

"Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you."

Tyron Lannister

There are only two things that are infinite. The universe and the stupidity of man. I’m not sure about the universe, though.

• Albert Einstein

"I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee...",

Unknown Soldier - Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

"No matter where you go, there you are"
– Dr. Buckaroo Banzai

There are tons of quotes I like. Below are some of my favorites.

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. - The Brothers Karamazov (book) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I don't want to live someone else's idea of how to live. Don't ask me to do that. I don't want to find out one day that I'm at the end of someone else's life. - Out of Africa (movie) by Sydney Pollack

Someone once told me the definition of hell; on your last day on earth, the person you could have become will meet the person you became. - Anonymous

The world needs fewer cynics and more skeptics.

"Comfort was the answer to all life's problems. It didn't solve them, but it made them more distant for a bit as they quietly worsened."

• Welcome to nightvale

"If soulmates exist, they're not found, they're made"

Money can't buy happiness; but at least you can live miserably in comfort

"A day may come when the courage of men fails when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day.” An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down. But it is not this day. This day we fight"

Martin Luther King Jr.

“The only common factor in all of your failures, is you.”

-Meh, I don’t know

I have many but here is one I wanna tattoo.

"This is your life, and is ending one minute at the time"

Also:

"Do what you can't"

It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.

Life is too short to please everybody.

george lucas' greatest accomplishment is that he created an alien that accurately represented seven racial stereotypes

Cormac Mccarthy:

"Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get anywhere."

I can't pick just one.

Now the world has gone to bed

Darkness won't engulf my head

I can see by infra-red

How I hate the night

-- Douglas Adams, hgttg, Page 444.

When you see yourself doing something badly, and no one's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.

-- Randy Pausch, the last lecture

Just go YouTube The Last Lecture. It takes an hour but you will come away different.

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." GRRM

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Alan Kay

"Don't whistle while you're pissing." ---Hagbard Celine - Illuminatus by Robert Anton Wilson

Good is not the enemy of perfect.

"Be careful what you wish for"

--Aesop--

"...because if just one of those things gets down here, then all of this... bullshit, that you think is so important, well, you can kiss all that goodbye."

• Ellen Ripley